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FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 
NEWTON D. BAKER 



FRONTIERS o/FREEDOM 

BY 
NEWTON D. BAKER 




NEW ^^ar^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1918,. 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



M/iy cQ 1S18 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



©GI.A499328 ^^ ^ ' 



PREFAGE 

As Mr. Dooley somewhere remarks, there is 
a great difference between a "Sicretary of War" 
and a "Sicretary of A War." 

The first, to be sure, is in days of peace, the 
Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds 
in the District of Columbia and the President of 
the Panama Railroad Company; he is Chairman 
of the National Forest Reservation Commission 
and Superintendent of Cleaning and Repairing 
the Statue of Liberty; he is administrator of 
laws relating to National Cemeteries and over- 
seer of bridge construction on navigable streams ; 
he has a multitude of other pastoral functions 
that have not the slightest relationship to the 
great god Mars. 

But the second — the war-time Secretary — 
fights a Nation's battles; he hears its censure 
and sometimes its praise; he is the subject of 
smoking-car debate and Congressional inquiry. 
Within the bounds of No Man's Land, a people 
to-day shut off from civilization by the ingrained 
iniquity of its rulers, seeks to fathom his plans 
and measure his potentialities. In Everyman's 

[vl 



PREFACE 

Land he reaches into myriad homes ; and even as 
she wipes away her farewell tear each sweetheart 
and mother and wife wonders how he will care 
for her boy. 

What, then, does he say and think while the 
world is being made over? What are the war- 
time utterances of our Secretary of War? The 
record has been meager. Secretary Baker 
speaks always extemporaneously ; there is neither 
manuscript nor notes. The comments here 
brought together had to be gathered from more 
or less fragmentary reports recorded, in most 
instances, without his knowledge. Indeed, they 
were seen by him first when these pages were 
"galleys." . 

For those who have known him and, knowing 
him, have loved him with a great love ; for those 
who have seen him put the fine impress of his 
soul into a Nation's armies; for those who have 
watched him, with the Commander-in-Chief, 
make this war not the military venture of a class, 
but the crusade of a people; for those, however 
humble, who have been privileged to work with 
him, who have seen him shun the market places, 
and, in the silent watches, who have learned from 
his consecration the greatness of the Cause — for 
those, these chapters need no apology. For the 
others, these remarks are put into this more per- 
manent form not alone because they are the 

[vi] 



PREFACE 

expressions — albeit impromptu — of the head of 
the miHtary establishment of a great Republic, 
but because they seem to speak spontaneously 
the language of a liberalism that even now is 
coming into its own. 

RaIvPH a. Hay^s 



[viil 



INTRODUCTION 

The addresses herein printed were delivered 
extemporaneously and without any other prep- 
aration than constant occupation upon the sub- 
jects with which they deal. Because they are the 
spontaneous reflections of the Secretary of War 
upon the social, economic and personal aspect 
of war waged by democracy and waged for very 
great issues of right, my friend and Secretary, 
Mr. Ralph A. Hayes, deemed me worthy of so 
much preservation as nowadays falls to one 
book more upon the groaning and bulging shelves 
of libraries. Just how he managed to recover as 
much as he has I don't know, though the ener- 
getic gentlemen who write for the daily press 
have doubtless been his chief source of supply; so 
if I should be grateful for being preserved, it 
must be to him and to them. If any of these ad- 
dresses appear to have the merit of well-chosen 
words, I must modestly, but frankly, give the 
credit again to Mr. Hayes and to Dr. F. P. 
Keppel, who divides everybody's labors in the 
War Department and still finds time to read 
the copies of proofs, which, as I wrote this, I 
myself have not yet been permitted to see. But 
I hope these preservers have found in their 

[ix] 



INTRODUCTION 

search the sentences I have sought to form ex- 
pressive of the meaning of the sacrifice which 
the world is now making, and therefore the es- 
sential glory of it all. 

It would be an unbearable thing if this great 
fire were found to have no purifying quality. I 
am well aware that the theory of compensation 
can be pressed too far and that one has to take 
a long look into a very uncertain and undeter- 
mined future even to imagine a world recon- 
stituted upon sufficiently just and beautiful lines 
to compensate for the agony of this trial to the 
human race. And yet there are evidences of 
reassurance on many hands. Our country has 
responded to this call without passion or evil 
sentiment, but with its head high and its purposes 
written on its heart, as they have been wonder- 
fully formulated into words by the President. It 
is not without significance that, although we 
have been in this war ten months, there has not 
yet appeared in any newspaper or magazine, nor 
has any public speaker ever suggested that we 
should look for advantage or seek to balance our 
loss account by the attainment of any selfish pur- 
pose. 

Meantime the people of our country have lost 
some sense of distinction which was growing 
up among us. The democracy of the new mili- 
tary army and of the new industrial army 
is too large to be obscured, and accepting de- 
mocracy as "a rule of action rather than social 



INTRODUCTION 

philosophy," our common effort in this great un- 
dertaking seems to promise future common ef- 
forts for purposes just as high in the reconstruc- 
tion of our social and economic organization. 

Some one has said that America will come out 
of this war more a nation than she has ever 
been. That is true; no more an old-fash- 
ioned nation with nationalistic objects and dy- 
nastic ambition, but a new-fashioned nation, 
with sounder attitude toward itself. This new 
nation will have learned to view in better propor- 
tion the importance of sound daily living and of 
community effort, and perhaps it is not too much 
to hope that the people of America, in common 
with the people of the other belligerent countries, 
will have a firm and fruitful conviction, when the 
war is over, that the glory of nations does not lie 
in material things at all, except as they are neces- 
sary to condition the development of the finest 
freedom and the best opportunities for spiritual 
growth among their people. 

Ne^wton D. Bak^r 

Washington, 

February, 26, 1918. 



M 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Singers OF Songs 15 

First National Community Song Day, Washington, 
December 9, 191 7 

The Task of the Colleges 22 

Gathering of College Presidents, Washington, 
May 5, 191 7 

The Function of Trade Publications ... 31 
Conference of Trade Publication Editors, Wash- 
ington, May 25, 191 7 

On the Evening of Registration Day ... 37 
Georgetown Citizens' Association, Washington, 
June 5, 1917 

The College Graduate in the New World . . 42 
Georgetown University Commencement, Wash- 
ington, June II, 191 7 

The Independence of 1776 and the Liberty of 

1917 SO 

Independence Day, New York 

The Battle of the Engineers 55 

Society for the Promotion of Engineering Educa- 
tion, Washington, July 7, 191 7 

The Responsibility of an Officer of the Army 

OF THE United States 61 

Officers' Training Camp, Fort Myer, Virginia, 
August 13, 191 7 

[xiii] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Labor's Dignity and Its Duty 66 

Labor Day, Newport News, Virginia, 191 7 

The March Toward Liberty 76 

Liberty Loan Meeting, Washington, October 8, 
1917 

Invisible Armor 84 

War Camp Recreation Conference, Washington, 
October 23, 191 7 

The Challenge to America 98 

Mass Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio, October 17, 191 7 

The Call to Free Men 116 

Tent Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio, October 17, 1917 

The Price of Peace 133 

Boston City Club, October 25, 191 7 

The Republic as Employer 149 

National Consumers' League, Baltimore, Md., 
November 14, 191 7 

Problems of the Melting Pot 162 

Convention of Police Chiefs, Washington, Decem- 
ber 4, 191 7 

Honor among Nations 173 

State Council of Defense, Richmond, Virginia, 
December 5, 191 7 

The Embattled Democracy 189 

New York Southern Society, December 12, 191 7 

The New Freedom and the Newer Democracy . 204 
'-'■ Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, Decem- 
ber 14, 1917 

[xiv] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Thrice- Armed America 218 

Chautauqua Representatives, Washington, Janu- 
ary 2, 1918 

^Expression Versus Suppression 225 

V National Social Hygiene Association, Washington, 
D.C., January 31, 1918 

What We Have Done to Make War .... 237 
Before the Senate Military Affairs Committee, 
January 28, 1918 

With the American Expeditionary Forces in 
France 328 

To the Engineers, March 14, 191 8 

To the Officers of the General Staff, March 18, 1918 

To the Rainbow Division, March 20, 1918 



M 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 



FRONTIERS OF 
FREEDOM 

THE SINGERS OF SONGS 

Our adversary began a war upon mankind with a song 
of hate. It came like a childish, impotent expression of 
feeble purpose, but it blistered the souls of people who 
sang it. We made another choice. We sing no songs of 
conquest; we sing the songs that express our love of 
country, that daily lead us to justice; we sing the songs 
of charity and helpfulness. 

W'hen this war is over I can imagine that upon many a 
hillside in France, in Italy, in Great Britain, upon a sum- 
mer's evening, there will be heard full-throated from the 
hearts of the people of those countries, America's pa- 
triotic songs being sung in memory of these days of glori- 
ous cooperation. 

First National Community Song Day, 
Washington, December 9, 191 7. 

ANDREW FLETCHER, I think it was, 
wrote that he once knew a very wise man 
who said that if he might write the ballads of his 
people he cared not who wrote their laws. And 
if we examine the history of people we find their 
most impressive moods as well as their heroic 
deeds preserved to national memory by having 
been recorded in song. I need perhaps to refer 

[15] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

to but one as an illustration. I do not know 
whether history records it but I imagine that the 
song of Deborah was sung by the people of Israel 
until the days of the Maccabees, for it embodied 
the highest inspiration, not only of the military 
and moral ideals of a great people; it was the top 
pitch of their national enthusiasm. 

In our ordinary daily life the spur of competi- 
tion is enough to stir individuals to effort and the 
best that each individual can bring forth under 
the influence of that spirit seems to have been 
productive of the highest development of our civ- 
ilization. But sometimes we come to a place 
where everybody must sink his own personality, 
must stop competitive strife, and must subordi- 
nate the personal purpose to the common pur- 
pose, where the individual success of any one 
must be forgotten in the common good of all, 
and then we have what in music is called the 
chorus. It is only when each singer in the chorus 
sings his or her part in due subordination to the 
artistic whole, it is only when we have perfect 
cooperation and perfect self-forgetfulness on the 
part of the singer, that we have complete har- 
mony. So it is in national effort of this kind. 
We are no longer at the place where we are free 
to pursue our little personal and selfish aims. 
There may be some of us who are not making 
direct personal contribution of sons, husbands, 
brothers, in the armed forces of the Nation, but 
there are none of us who are not having our 

[16] 



THE SINGERS OF SONGS 

hearts subjected to the same draff as our neigh- 
bbrs' hearts, and when a soldier goes to the front, 
whether he is my brother or son or not, my heart 
goes out with him. Men we never heard of, men 
whose families we have never known, may be- 
come in these moments of consecrated self-sacri- 
fice our heroes. 

There is a process of affectionate adoption go- 
ing on throughout the whole body of the people; 
there is a call Upon us ; we are rendered incapable 
of little and petty and selfish and separate influ- 
ences and interests; and all that constituted the 
support of our daily life is submerged now under 
the spur of a national purpose inspired by a na- 
tional idea. One of the great goods of war 
perhaps is that it enables people to discover in 
themselves unsuspected capacities; it enables us 
to bring to the surface latent superiorities of 
which we had no previous knowledge. Some- 
how or another, in the fiery trial of war, one 
who was not regarded as promising develops 
into a great, self-sacrificing, real representative 
of the heart and soul of the Nation. And nations 
are like people. We toddle along in our infancy 
as a nation and cultivate grain in order to live; 
and after a while we begin to lay down our law ; 
and then awakening to the full strength of our 
capacity, we apply steam and electricity to me- 
chanical arts. Then war comes — great war 
against a great adversary ; and when ships begin 
to leave for France and carry that new Army of 

[17] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

ours, it is only then that we see, as it were, rising 
out of the sea, the very soul of the nation itself. 

Songs are used for different things. Our ad- 
versary began a war upon mankind with a song 
of hate. It came like a childish, impotent ex- 
pression of feeble purpose, but it blistered the 
souls of people who sang it. We have chosen 
otherwise. We are singing no song of conquest, 
we are singing the songs that express our love 
of our own country, we are singing the hymns 
that daily lead us to justice, we are singing the 
songs of charity and helpfulness. W^e have done 
what we have with a proper and helpful devel- 
opment of those powers which the Almighty has 
granted us. 

I remember that I once heard (these things 
come back like pages from a scrap-book) how 
some ancient king planned to send his army 
against an adversary, and in advance he sent an 
ambassador or messenger; and the ambassador 
came back and said: — ''Your majesty, those peo- 
ple cannot be overcome ! They sing as they fight," 
Our Army in France will sing because of the help- 
fulness of song. There are emotions which find 
no other mode of expression. They will sing be- 
cause their cause is just and they know it. They 
will sing because they are sons of a free people; 
they will sing because in their own land doctrines 
devised long ago have proved so fruitful and 
fructifying that they have spread a benign in- 

[18] 



THE SINGERS OF SONGS 

fluence over the whole world and are an en- 
lightenment to people everywhere. They will sing 
because victory must come to men who represent 
such a cause, and we at home will sing meantime 
with all the confidence and pride that people can 
have in our Army. We know that whatever the 
struggle and whatever the cost, they will come 
back to us with the fruits of victory and that 
when we reach out and pick those fruits, they 
will not wither in our hands as things we ought 
not to have, but they will be for a higher life and 
better uses for the sons and daughters of men 
everywhere. 

Every now and then in the great movements 
of the world's affairs, we discover evidences of 
design and plan almost like the last act of a tan- 
gled and intricate play. Sometimes in a novel, 
in the first chapter, a mysterious figure seems to 
be present and when the final evolution of the 
thing comes about and all of the complications 
are to be swept away, this mysterious character 
appears in the center of the stage, and we see the 
hero. In 1776 a Republic was established over 
here. . There never had been such a one before, 
— it was like the mysterious character in the 
story, — separated by miles of ocean from the 
civilized portion of the world; and after a while 
things came to be invented, newspapers, cables 
and wireless, which served to make closer ties be- 
tween the old and new worlds, and still there 
seemed to be no explanation for this first charac- 

[19] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

ter that appeared. Now we are at the end of the 
book, and the explanation is manifest, — the peo- 
ples of Europe who have a situation which is 
truly admirable, which is built upon justice, upon 
respect for traditions, upon considerations of re- 
spect for humanity, those peoples have been at 
death grips with the adversary, the enemy of 
all that is just and humane. And now comes the 
character from the first chapter of the book, the 
Republic established in 1776, to join the strength 
of this young giant with the vigor of a splendid 
spirit, to luring the inexhaustible materials of our 
great continent, to bring the splendid spiritual 
love of liberty, in order that this volume of the 
book of the world will close with the mystery ex- 
plained, the trouble settled, the problem solved, 
and a reign of justice inaugurated. 

We sing songs in many languages, but all of 
them on the same theme. When this war is 
over, I can imagine that upon many a hillside in 
France, in Italy, in Great Britain, upon a sum- 
mer's evening, there will be heard full-throated 
from the hearts of the people of those countries 
America's patriotic songs sung in meniory of 
these days of glorious cooperation. When our 
boys come back from France and have ac- 
complished the mission which they are to accom- 
plish there, our schools, our choral societies, will 
sing, not as an exhibition of a type of music, but 
as expressive of a great experience, patriotic 

[20] 



THE SINGERS OF SONGS 

songs of these countries with which we are now 
allied. 

I trust that this movement for a widespread 
growth of the spirit of song will meet with in- 
creasing success and that the songs sung will be 
worthy of this people who in their hours of 
preparation are already so splendid and in their 
cooperation abroad will furnish an incomparable 
demonstration of the truth of that maxim that 
in war morale is to force as three to one. 



[21] 



THE TASK OF THE COLLEGES 

We are in a great enterprise. The world must have 
peace. We have discovered, at the end of a long and 
patient experience, that the world can not he rescued 
from destruction and slaughter except by the major exer- 
cise of the martial forces of this Republic. 

Gathering of College Presidents, Conti- 
nental Hall, Washington, May 5, 191 7. 

THE War Department is especially anxious 
not to disturb unduly the educational sys- 
tems of the country. I have had within the last 
two or three weeks a very large number of more 
or less intricate and difficult questions arising in 
the colleges, and no doubt each of you has had 
to face those questions probably in more acute 
form than I. When the call to national service 
arose, spirited young men everywhere of course 
wanted to be employed in a patriotic way, and I 
suppose there is scarcely a boy in any college in 
the country who has not very anxiously addressed 
to himself the question: "What can I do?" A 
number of college presidents have done me the 
honor of asking me the answer to that ques- 
tion, and I have had to confess each time 
that I thought there was no general answer ; that 

[22] 



THE TASK OF THE COLLEGES 

even in those cases where it would be obviously 
better for a boy to stay at college and prepare 
for later and fuller usefulness, if the boy in so 
doing acquired a low view of his own courage 
and felt that he was electing the less worthy 
course, the effect on the boy himself of that state 
of mind probably was so prejudicial that it ought 
not to be encouraged. 

I think this, though, is more or less clear to 
those of us who look at it from the outside: First, 
that the country needs officers. There is no 
preference of college men for officers, but be- 
cause a man has had academic opportunities he 
has to start with, presumptively at least, a better 
foundation upon which to build the learning 
which an officer must have; and therefore to a 
very substantial extent the country desires its 
college graduates and its college-bred men of 
suitable age in the training camps in order that 
they may be rapidly matured into officers and 
used in the training of the new forces. 

To the extent that the men in college are phys- 
ically disqualified, or to the extent that they are 
too young to meet the requirements of the De- 
partment, it seems quite clear that in the present 
state of the emergency their major usefulness 
lies in remaining in the college, going forward 
with their academic work; and the colleges can, 
I think, lend some color of patriotic endeavor to 
their so doing by such simple modifications of 
their courses and curricula as will show the boys 

[23] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

who stay that they are being directly equipped 
for subsequent usefulne'ss if the emergency lasts 
until their call comes. 

A number of questions have arisen with regard 
to the possibility of the establishment of junior 
training camp or training corps divisions in col- 
leges. Pretty nearly every college in this coun- 
try, when the national emergency arose, applied 
for training camp or training corps facilities. In 
some, such corps. had already been established; 
and there was an immediate and so far as I know 
an almost unanimous demand on the part of the 
colleges of the country in which such corps had 
not been established for their establishment. 
That presented to the War Department several 
difficult problems which we have undertaken to 
solve, and I trust we have solved them wisely, 
though nobody could be more sensible than I am 
that our solution has not been satisfactory in all 
instances. 

The problem presented by those applications 
was this: That we are not now dealing with an 
Army of two or three hundred thousand men. 
We are about to deal with an Army of a million 
and a half men ; and the mills and manufactories 
in this country which are equipped and expe- 
rienced in making army supplies and equipment 
are too few to turn out the supplies necessary for 
this larger force. 

We therefore have this added burden— that in- 
stead of going out into a customary market to 

[24] 



THE TASK OF THE COLLEGES 

buy usual supplies, we must go into an unfamiliar 
market, go clear back to the raw material in all 
likelihood, and persuade persons, who have not 
hitherto manufactured the sort of things. we de- 
sire to have, to divert their energies from their 
normal domestic production into the production 
necessary for the War Department That of 
course presented to us the problem of where we 
are going to get the necessary equipment of uni- 
forms, clothing, and other sorts of supplies 
which this large Army will need; and it necessi- 
tates a very parsimonious and husbanding treat- 
ment of such supplies as we have or which are 
in immediate prospect. 

Therefore, on that ground, it seems wise not to 
encourage the present formation of junior corps 
which would be outside of the emergency forces 
which it is our first duty to provide and equip, 
because equipping such junior corps would to 
that extent delay and diminish the quantity of 
supplies and equipment available to the actual 
forces which are first to go, into training. 

The second aspect of this matter is with re- 
gard to officers for training purposes. We need 
something like 20,000 additional officers for the 
training of the first increment of 500,000 men to 
be secured under the, sejective process. The 
training camps, it is hoped, will give us a very 
substantial number of those. Additional offi- 
cers' training camps later on may be necessary 
so that we can secure enough officers. It must be 

[25] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

an exceedingly intensive process ; in other words, 
there must be a very great deal of individual at- 
tention paid to these young men who in three 
months are to acquire what ordinarily three 
years is none too much to acquire well ; and there- 
fore the Army is going, to some extent at least, 
to model its treatment of the problem upon the 
tutorial system with which colleges are so fa- 
miliar, and, as far as it can, give individual 
treatment to the young men in these training 
corps. That will necessitate a very rigid devo- 
tion of the officers available for training pur- 
poses to these training camps, and makes it im- 
possible for us to disperse our officer talent and 
energy by the establishment of these junior corps 
widespread over the country, since these camps 
would, of course, require competent officers to 
make them succeed. 

It was then suggested that there perhaps 
might be a few such junior camps established at 
certain places, and that the college men from 
other colleges might be centered into a few col- 
leges — one, perhaps, in each training district — 
and taught in those places without too great a 
draft upon our officer training material. I discov- 
ered that the effect of such a process would 
be to draft off, from all of the colleges at which 
such corps were not established, their students 
into the colleges where such corps were 
established; and the effect of that seems to me 
to threaten a very profound disorganization of 

[26] 



THE TASK OF THE COLLEGES 

the entire academic system of the country. It 
seems to me that if there were forty colleges in 
a district, and at only one of those colleges was 
military training available, the other thirty-nine 
would find themselves, temporarily at any rate, 
losing a great part of their student body. The boys 
would all want to go to the one at which this in- 
struction was possible, and then perhaps forming 
friendships and alliances there, being imbued with 
the military spirit, they would return reluctantly 
if at all to the colleges of their normal affilia- 
tion; and so it seemed to me that such a plan 
might prove to be destructive of the repose which 
it is everybody's desire to keep as far as possible 
in the common life of the country during this 
time of emergency. 

The policy of the Department, therefore, has 
been to maintain such corps in tho. -^ colleges 
where they have been established prior to this 
emergency, but only so long as the officers there 
detailed can be spared from the more important 
duty of training the actual forces which are being 
fitted for actual service. 

In a democracy, the calling together of the 
forces of the Nation for so unfamiliar a task as 
war necessarily produces a profound dislocation 
of practically every art and every association 
which in normal times is characteristic of the 
Nation's life. The college presidents, people who 
are connected with the institutions of higher 
learning, have a peculiar opportunity to exercise 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

a steadying and restraining influence. I think 
we ought all to adopt as the daily maxim of 
our talk and our activity that the country shall 
make every sacrifice necessary, shall break up 
every alliance, if necessary, to bring our force 
to bear in the most effective way ; but at the same 
time I think that we ought to preserve the country 
for the common good against every unnecessary 
dislocation and against every unnecessary abridg- 
ment of the processes of our common life. 

I do not know any source from which that 
sort of cool, helpful thinking can emanate with 
as much effect as from the college presidents of 
this country. We do not want to chill enthu- 
siasm. We want to preserve enthusiasm and cul- 
tivate it and use it ; but we do want to be discrim- 
inatingin our enthusiasm, and prevent people from 
getting the notion that they are not helping the 
country unless they do something different, which 
very often is not the case at all. The largest 
usefulness may come from doing the same thing 
— just continuing to do it. Now, it is not un- 
natural that there should be these ebullitions of 
feeling, this desire to change occupation as a 
badge of changed service and devotion to ideals; 
but you gentlemen can exercise a very steadying 
influence in that regard. 

One other thought : I believe everybody in this 
country has been delighted at the freedom of 
our country from ill-considered and impulsive 
action in connection with this great undertaking. 

[28] 



THE TASK OF THE COLLEGES 

I think everybody in this country has been pleased 
at the good feeling which our people have main- 
tained toward one another, the freedom of the 
country from internal disturbance and embit- 
tered difference of opinion. I hope that will 
continue; I think it will continue; and yet in a 
country made up as ours is, it is very easy to 
imagine difficulty arising from an indiscretion 
or from an over-zealous state of mind. I can 
easily imagine a man whose affiliations, for in- 
stance, would be with a German ancestry and 
German traditions, making an indiscreet remark 
and arousing a very great deal of resentment, 
and following this a heady community impulse 
not only against him and his remark, but gen- 
eralized against all persons who bore the same 
kind of name or the same sort of traditional 
affiliation. And I can easily imagine a com- 
munity getting itself worked up into a pretty 
feverish state of opinion, and feeling that it ought 
to resent as disloyal what was perhaps only a 
thoughtless and unmeant indiscretion. 

Now, we are at the beginning of this. We are 
going to have losses on the sea ; we are going to 
have losses in battle; our communities are going 
to be subjected to the rigid discipline of multi- 
plied personal griefs scattered all through the 
community, and we are going to search the cause 
of those back to their foundation, and our feel- 
ings are going to be torn and our nerves made 
raw. This is the time for physicians of public 

[291 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

opinion to exercise a curative impulse. You 
gentlemen and the young men who are in your 
colleges, who go to their homes from your col- 
leges and write to their homes from your col- 
leges, making up thus a very large part of the di- 
rection of public opinion, you can exercise a cura- 
tive influence by preaching the doctrine of toler- 
ance, by exemplifying the fact that it is not neces- 
sary for a nation like the United States, which is 
fighting for the vindication of a great ideal, to 
discolor its purpose by hatreds or by the enter- 
tainment of any unworthy emotion. 

We are in a great enterprise, gentlemen. The 
world must have peace. The destruction of life 
and property which is now going on in the world 
is intolerable. We have at the end of a long and 
patient experience discovered that the world 
cannot be rescued from slaughter and destruc- 
tion by any other process than a major exercise 
of the great martial force of this Republic; but 
we ought never to lose sight of the fact that the 
purpose of this war is not aggression, is not 
punishment; it is not inspired by resentments 
nor fed by ambitions, but it is loyalty to an ideal, 
and that ideal is freeing the world from an im- 
possible international philosophy, a philosophy 
in which, if it should prevail, no freedom is left 
or is safe. 



[30] 



THE FUNCTION OF TRADE PUBUCA^ 
TIONS 

A declaration of war is always a declaration of an 
open season for critics; and that is rather fortunate. 

Conference of Trade Publication Editors, 
Washington, May 25, 191 7. 

WE have devoted an enormous part of the 
intellectual energy and the physical 
strength of mankind to the conquest of the forces 
and the resources of nature. We have reached 
literally into the clouds and captured the great- 
est servant mankind ever had and brought him 
down and turned him to driving our dynamos. 
We have reached down into the very center of 
the earth and taken up portions of the earth it- 
self, and, by processes which alchemy would have 
regarded as miraculous, have used the bony 
structure of the earth as a fuel for the produc- 
tion of energy to serve us in physical ways. We 
have taken the brain of man and put it on the 
anvil of invention and brought out all manner 
of physical and mechanical contrivances, inven- 
tions, aids, and appliances, easing the burden of 
doing the physical work of the world. And yet, 
in the very nature of that process of consuming 

[31] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the earth and converting it into new forms and 
agencies for service and helpfulness, the ques- 
tion is not improper as to whether we have not 
created a bigger servant than we can manage. 

I imagine that the inspiration of the impossi- 
ble political philosophy which at present seems 
to govern our adversary is born of industrialism. 
I suspect that the motive of the pan-German 
movement, the Berlin-Bagdad movement, — I sus- 
pect that practically all of the major things that 
have been involved in that diplomacy of Middle 
Europe for the past twenty-five or thirty years 
are based upon industrial aspirations and ambi- 
tions, and if we look at it with perfect calmness, 
I think we can say, in an uncritical or at least 
in an unblaming spirit, that the German ruling 
mind has become so obsessed with the grandeur 
of industrial supremacy that it has completely 
lost sense of the existence of moral standards. 

You and I know many Germans. Many of 
them have been our personal acquaintances and 
our friends, and a more gentle and more neigh- 
borly and more kindly and orderly set of ac- 
quaintances none of us ever had. It is not in 
their nature to spread poisoned candy and to 
poison wells, and to commit assassinations as a 
process of war upon the sea; it is no more a part 
of their nature than of anybody's else to resort 
to barbarity ; but when the great obsession comes, 
after the nervous energies of a people have been 
devoted for a continuous number of years to the 



THE FUNCTION OF TRADE PUBLICATIONS 

idea of mechanical and industrial supremacy, 
and the moral balance has been lost or withdrawn, 
then such results as we now see come to pass. 

Now, why is that? It is because war has be- 
come a thing- of industry and commerce and busi- 
ness. It is no longer Samson with his shield and 
spear and sword, and David with his sling; it is 
no longer selected parties representing nations 
as champions, and in physical conflict one with 
the other ; but it is the conflict of smokestacks 
now, it is the combat of the driving wheel and 
of the engine, and the nation or group of nations 
in a modern war which is to prevail is the one 
which will best be able to coordinate and mar- 
shal its material, industrial, and commercial 
strength against the combination which may be 
opposed to it. 

The very skies are filled with warriors, and the 
underseas as well. No small part of the me- 
chanical progress which has been made by man- 
kind has been drafted into the making of what 
is called the lethal weapon of war, and here in 
Washington we are undertaking now to marshal 
the genius and the vitality and the courage of a 
great peace-loving people, in order that they may 
throw their preponderating weight as a unit upon 
the scales and so rescue peace for the world. 

We start into this war as the evangels of 
peace; we are mobilizing the industry and the 
resources of the United States in order that they 
may secure peace for the world. Every conflict 

[33] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

we have among ourselves, every dissent which 
we allow to be pressed beyond the point of that 
expression of opinion which is necessary to se- 
cure wisdom, every division which we allow 
among ourselves, delays the achievement of the 
great object of this war, and it is for that reason 
that I address to you, as editors, these precau- 
tionary remarks. It is not possible to take the 
industrial, commercial, agricultural, and social 
life of a nation of 110,000,000 people and divert 
them out of their normal courses without creat- 
ing here and there confusion and without break- 
ing in upon the long-established and deeply cher- 
ished habits of great numbers of men. 

The greatest asset we have is our habits; it 
makes unnecessary separate reasoning operations 
for a great variety of things which we are com- 
pelled to do daily, and it is not until we have con- 
verted an operation into a habit that it becomes 
an asset. Now, in this mobilization of the peo- 
ple of the United States we are going to jar their 
habits. Business houses are not going to be able 
to do as they used to do, in many ways ; workers 
in industrial establishments, farmers who are 
tilling their fields, everybody is going to be asked 
to give up, or at least to permit the temporary 
obstruction of some of these deeply embedded 
habitual modes of action and thought, and, as a 
consequence, we are all going to be in a more or 
less disturbed state of mind. Things are not going 
to be as they usually are, and our minds are go- 

[34] 



THE FUNCTION OF TRADE PUBLICATIONS 

ing to be filled with questions as to whether the 
things which are in an unusual state are in a 
right or a profitable state. 

You, gentlemen, are going to meet that in the 
trades which your journals address. Some of 
the reorganizations and readjustments in those 
trades are going to be quite fundamental and 
profound, and the disturbance of the line of 
habit and normal business is going to be exceed- 
ingly marked and difficult of rapid adjustment. 
Now, if your journals, catching the spirit of the 
community of enterprise, will preach to those 
who read your papers and who are influenced by 
them, and whose modes of thought are con- 
trolled by them — if you will preach to them the 
constant doctrine of the necessity of the sacri- 
fice of habit, in order that there may be com- 
munity of enterprise in this new undertaking, if 
you will just take the trouble to analyze the creak- 
ing which the machine develops in the process 
of readjustment, and point out in a large view 
how necessary it is that these things should be, 
if you will calm the apprehensions and spur the 
courage and determination of your clientele, you 
will have it in your power to make a contribu- 
tion to this aggregation of our industrial and 
other resources in a common cause which will 
be second to no contribution made by any group 
in the country. 

I am not asking you to forbear criticism. A 
declaration of war is always a declaration of an 

[35] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

open season for critics, and that is rather for- 
tunate. There are no perfect people, and all of 
us who are imperfect are anxious to have our 
imperfections called to our attention, so that we 
can be more on guard against them, and people 
who are exceedingly busy about great tasks are 
quite likely to allow their natural imperfections 
to run away with them, while they are absorbed 
about other things, so that criticism is helpful. 
But make it constructive. There is a man in my 
country from whom I learned more than from 
any man I ever knew, I think. He bought a 
house in the country, and decided that it needed 
a new roof. It was a very humble place, and as 
soon as he decided that the existing roof would 
not do he got a ladder and got up on the roof 
and tore it all off; and when he got down to the 
bottom of the ladder he realized that he had not 
yet thought of buying a new set of shingles, and 
it was a long time before he could either get the 
money together or get his friends to bring the 
new shingles out to him, and in that time the 
rains came and the winds blew, and every make- 
shift device that he could provide did not keep him 
from catching cold and ultimately dying from 
exposure. Make your criticism helpful and con- 
structive ; point out the right way when you dis- 
cover that anything is being done wrong, and 
do not spare us who are here charged with re- 
sponsibility, if, after you have pointed out the 
right way, we persist in continuing in the wrong. 

[36] 



ON THE EVENING OF REGISTRATION 

DAY 

Men have stood in the market-place and beaten the 
drum and played the Hfe; and men have gone out to fight 
for causes that were less high than this. By the rotation 
of events and the irresistible logic of righteousness, which 
summons every brave arm to the right side of the cause, 
the United States has entered this war, and it will never 
turn back until it has given peace to the world. 

Georgetown Citizens' Association^ Montrose 
Park, Georgetown, Registration Day, 

June 5, 1917. 

AS I sat here on the platform for the few 
minutes before this meeting opened, look- 
ing at this beautiful park with its fine old trees, 
and saw the setting sun and heard the laughter 
of children, there arose inevitably in my mind a 
sense of the profound and almost indescribable 
contrast between this and any other country in 
the world. 

Our life is full and rich and varied. Our old 
and young alike have had a full life. If we se- 
lect any other country in the world to draw our 
contrast from, words fail us. One might draw 
a sad picture of Poland, of Rumania or Belgium 
or Serbia — countries in which boys the size of our 

[37] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

boy scouts are called upon to bear arms — but it 
would not give the whole truth. I saw a picture 
a day or two ago of a child in the Serbian Army 
at the end of a lo-mile walk carrying a man's 
musket — a child who had just stepped out of a 
cradle into the ranks. And if we take all coun- 
tries of the earth, we find privation and sorrow 
written everywhere. Now, this war is costing 
the world at the present time something more 
than $60,000,000 every day, and something more 
than ten thousand lives every day. And the sac- 
rifice and the slaughter have gone on day after 
day with solemn certainty and with an increas- 
ing uncertainty as to the end of it all. 

This is not the place for me to describe what 
I believe to be the cause of it; and yet, if I am 
permitted to put that cause in a sentence, it is 
because a- certain group of nations have set gain 
above God, have set national aggrandizement 
and aggression above national righteousness and 
fair dealing. As a consequence of that, we have 
witnessed an increasing savagery of war ; so that 
it is no longer a question of even the most mod- 
ern science in the art of warfare, with an aim 
and purpose to ameliorate its severity and pro- 
tect the innocent, but a complete surrender to 
the bestial. As they have it now, it is no longer 
a contest of bodies of men against bodies of men. 
It is no longer an open conflict upon a fair plane, 
where genius and strategy and courage work out 
a national problem. But it is, in part at least, 

[88] 



ON THE EVENING OF REGISTRATION DAY 

the assassination by sea and slaughter by air, and 
the killing of women and children. It is the 
casual, pitiless slaughter of the unoffending and 
the defenseless. 

And now, by the rotation of events and the 
irresistible logic of righteousness which summons 
every brave arm to the right side of the cause, 
the United States has entered this war. And 
it will never turn back until it has given the 
world peace; not merely a cessation of conflict, 
but peace based upon righteousness. And so now 
we are in the business of summoning the re- 
sources of the greatest nation on earth in the 
purest mission that a nation ever espoused. Our 
factories become busy; our young men register; 
our armies become trained; and we undertake 
our share in this conflict. Not to add a square 
inch to the territory of the United States ; not to 
take from any man, woman, or child living in 
the world a single thing which belongs to him; 
not even for the glory of successful arms; but 
in order to reestablish those principles of na- 
tional justice without which national continu- 
ance and life can not prevail, and to give to the 
stricken peoples of the world who have been 
fighting for the right, rest and respite to rehabili- 
tate their almost destroyed civilization. 

How splendid that cause is ! There have been 
times in history when men stood off in the mar- 
ket place and beat the drum or played the fife 
and men went out to fight for causes that were 

[39] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

less high than this^a cause without taint of sel- 
fishness and without tarnish of any unholy im- 
pulse. It is a fight for principle and right, and 
America responds to it; not gaily, as a nation 
which likes to fight, but bravely and prayerfully, 
resolved that it will fight to the end in a cause 
for democracy. 

There is an old story among the Greeks that 
when Jason was off in some remote place and was 
in need of soldiers he was told to sow dragons' 
teeth; and, acting in faith on that advice, he 
sowed dragons' teeth in the earth; instantly 
there sprang up out of the bosom of the earth 
full armed and panoplied, a company of soldiers 
which he led to triumph. We have sown not 
dragons' teeth, but we have sown the principles 
of freedom, and when we summon the people 
of this mighty Nation we obtain, as did Jason in 
ancient times, our response. Here, all over this 
continent, ten million men to-day have sprung 
up ready to do battle for the fundamental prin- 
ciples upon which their liberty and their principles 
rest. 

There are old men in this company who weigh 
properly the significance of this day. They know 
that war is terrible, and they view this day with 
a solemn spirit. And there are young men and 
young women here to-day who probably have 
not had the background of knowledge and expe- 
rience and training to aid them to grasp the full 
significance of all that is going on, and who yet 

[40] _ 



ON THE EVENING OF REGISTRATION DAY 

feel a sense of consecration to national service. 
And there are little people here to-day to whom in 
some gense this is a holiday and a festival. But 
when it is over and history takes the measure of 
it, it will be recognized as really a day upon which 
a great and free people vindicated themselves and 
a cause to the rest of all mankind. 

Against the doubt in the minds of some as to 
whether a democracy could summon its strength 
in the issue, we find that all doubts on that sub- 
ject are unworthy ; that those who argue for dic- 
tatorship and strong governments are answered 
by the events of to-day. For I have had tele- 
grams from more than thirty States of this Union 
showing that registration has proceeded from 
early morning until late to-day uninterrupted by 
any improper or discouraging event. Nor is there 
doubt on anybody's part that it is our patriotic 
duty to obey the law provided in the wisdom of 
Congress to summon soldiers in a just, democratic 
and fair way, to arm the Nation in defense of its 
rights. 



[411 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE IN THE NEW 
WORLD 

When peace is restored, the voyagers from America 
will go over not idly to find the place where Europe 
was, but to hind up her wounds and enable her people to 
begin again. That will he a great day for America. 

Georgetown University Commencement 
Exercises, June ii, 19 17. 

I KNOW of no more pleasant office than to 
visit the pier of a great steamship to bid bon- 
voyage and God-speed to friends as they are 
about to undertake a voyage to a distant coun- 
try. There is always just a little solicitude. The 
imagination conjures up dangers and difficulties 
which may lie in wait. And then, with happy 
faces and the waving of handkerchiefs, the call 
of glad good-bys, the ship is off; the voyagers 
are bound for a distant land. And so with the 
Commencement. It has always seemed to me 
an especially gratifying and pleasant thing to 
stand, as it were, on the shore and wave good- 
by and God-speed to the young men who are to 
embark on the voyage of life, and to allay their 
fears and instruct them in the dangers which we 
older people are assumed to have encountered 
and overcome. 

[42] 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE IN NEW WORLD 

Education is, after all, not really so much a 
distinction as it is a trust. We are educated not 
for the purpose of making us better than other 
people but for putting us in a position where we 
are able to reach down a hand and help others. 
And those who properly conceive, I think, the 
function of education and culture in the world 
regard it as a disseminating medium for 
the purposes of life and the distribution of good 
to mankind. Education is a curious thing, too, 
because of its constant change of character. 
There was a time when there was very little 
scholarship in the world as we now know it; not 
that there were not always scholars. There were 
certain men who preferred the higher things and 
gave their time to reflection and contemplation 
and meditation. But the orbit of their inquiry 
was a very circumscribed one. Later, men 
reached out into nature and captured new forces 
and, with wonderful ingenuity, they have brought 
these forces down and made them serve mankind, 
to become sources of comfort and means of ad- 
vancement. A great gift to the world is bestowed 
when a college is able to hold out her palm and 
give to mankind such young men who have en- 
joyed four years of culture and discipline of mind. 

To-day is a curious day for men who are be- 
ing graduated from college. I remember an 
old story of a child that went into a great hall 
in some baronial castle, and as this child played 

[4S] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

about among the great emblems of the past 
scattered through the hall, it went up to one 
figure which was shrouded in a soft, silken 
garment. The child stood wrapt in wonder as 
the figure shed its garment and disclosed a 
knight's armor. And so it is as you men come 
forward to-day — as your gowns fall open, the 
khaki of the soldier is revealed. We are under 
far different circumstances from those in which 
Commencements are ordinarily held. This great 
country of ours, this land of generous opportu- 
nities and resources, this land wedded to peace, 
this land married to justice, which has set justice 
and equality of opportunity and fair play above 
every material possession, this land of ours is at 
war, and that war the greatest war in the his- 
tory of the human race. 

And as we reflect upon this, we are reminded 
that the presence of war imposes new duties upon 
us, calls for a new organization of our people and 
a course out of the customary channels of our 
life. This war began for us as no other war 
within my knowledge of history ever began. 
For one year, two years, and two and a half 
years, the statesmen of this country were seek- 
ing some way to compose the agitated powers of 
the world, to restore justice and peace to the 
world. We professed neutrality and pursued 
and were loyal to certain fundamental principles 
upon which we believed national peace to rest. 

[44] 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE IN NEW WORLD 

Then, not driven by hurried thoughts to quick 
emotions, but with a stern realization that things 
had come to a state in which life was utterly 
without security, we entered this war; not with 
an ambition to take from anybody anything that 
is his; with no revenge to satisfy; with no unholy 
or impure purpose and no tarnish upon our 
escutcheon, we appeared in this war as friends 
of men; as the defenders of justice; as the re- 
storers of peace to a stricken world; as establish- 
ers of international freedom, if in God's provi- 
dence it may be that nations may dwell in se- 
curity and peace. I have no doubt some of you 
have read the stories of King Arthur and the 
Knights of the Round Table. You will remem- 
ber it was the function of these men to bring 
justice and to relieve the oppressed. They went 
out into the world with no particular quarrel of 
their own except the eternal quarrel that man 
has with injustice. They were knights-errant 
seeking to reestablish a better world. And so, 
although our own United States has had griev- 
ance after grievance that more than justified its 
entrance into war, yet in some sense the United 
States is a knight-errant in this conflict; in the 
sense at least that she is not seeking to effect a 
wrong purpose but to bring peace and establish 
justice in the shortest possible time, and seeking 
to give to mankind a better basis for the enjoy- 
ment of life. ^ 

[45] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

And so now we are in this great war. Our 
110,000,000 people are being reassorted and new 
tasks are being allotted to each of us. The sum- 
mons comes to some of you to put on uniforms 
and go as soldiers or physicians and take your 
place with the military forces of the nation; and 
to some it is a call to stay at home. It is for 
all a summons to a part of the great task that is 
to be accomplished in order that the great army 
at the front may succeed. But whether your 
place is in a trench or a workshop or factory, 
whether the call to you is military or civil, the 
call is of equal intensity to all of us to dedicate 
ourselves and everything we have to the success 
of the great cause for which our country has en- 
tered the war — to bring, as the result of our ac- 
tivities, peace to the world. For that is above 
all things what the world needs most. 

But that is not especially a Commencement 
theme. Some day this war will be over and then 
there still remains a great fight to be fought. 
This shattered civilization has to be reconstructed 
and a world which has become out of order is to 
be readjusted and there will have to be a rehabil- 
itation of practically all the civilized people in 
the world. Now there are not so many civilized 
people in the world. More than two-thirds of 
the people in the world live in bamboo houses and 
the "civilized" peoples are at present destroying 
one another at the rate of ten to fifteen thousand 

[46] 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE IN NEW WORLD 

a day; their widows are dying, their children 
starving, and the accumulations of ten centuries 
of accomplishment are being destroyed and 
leveled to the ground. And when this holocaust 
is over, the rehabilitation and the reconstruction 
make another task which remains to be under- 
. taken. I do not mean to undervalue your work 
as soldiers. If your country reaches out for 
one of you and asks that you give your life, then 
thank God that you have the opportunity to 
serve and if necessary to die. But if that be 
not your task, when the rehabilitation comes, 
then the education you have received here will 
be in great demand ; the world will be very eager 
for men of cultured minds, men who have stud- 
ied the philosophy and the history and the sci- 
ences of the race; men of learning and knowl- 
edge; men who have caught the inspiration that 
the college man has the best opportunity of be- 
ing of service to his fellows. 

And while this war is going on, I trust that 
all of us will recognize the imperative necessity 
of keeping the lamp of learning burning. We 
must not allow our schools to be closed. We 
must not feel that any of our young men who 
can be spared should abandon the pursuit of 
study. But rather all of us should feel that, 
while the actual conflict is on, there should be 
still another generation of cultured young men 
who will be ready to proceed with this work of 
reconstruction. \ 

[47] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

I do not want to harrow your feelings by 
drawing any picture of the desolation of the 
world now, and yet it is known that empires are 
laid waste; in certain devastated districts of Po- 
land it is said there is not now living a chil4 under 
five years of age. Men, women and children 
are deported from their native places. Even 
babies are trampled out of existence and lost in 
the alternate advance and retreat of the herded 
people as they seek to escape their adversary. I 
once saw a picture of Martinique just after the 
volcanic eruption — a picture of a great waste; 
of desolation; the mountains slumbering as the 
stars disappeared, and a solitary voyager search- 
ing for the place where a city once was. That 
is just the picture of the world abroad and the 
realization of the destruction which has come 
upon it. And when we have restored peace with 
justice to this world, then the voyagers from 
America will go over, not idly to find the 
place where Europe was, but to bind up her 
wounds and enable her people to begin again. 
That will be a great day for America. 

Our fathers established a nation in order that 
we might be free, and in 19 17, 19 18, or when- 
ever it is to be, in God's providence, that peace 
is restored in this world, we will take up the 
torch our fathers lit in 1776 and plant it in Eu- 
rope to help make the whole world free. 

I congratulate you, therefore, young gentle- 
men, upon your graduation day and this com- 

[48] 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE IN NEW WORLD 

mencement in life. I greet you especially be- 
cause you are commencing at an heroic time — 
you are entering life in an heroic age. The com- 
monplaces have been swept aside and there is 
great men's work before you. Don't let your 
learning stop with your diploma — continue it, 
and always hold it in readiness to bestow on 
others. Adopt for your own the motto exempli- 
fied in the life of Farragut, "who always lived 
so as at any time to be equal to the greatest task 
in the service of mankind which could by any 
possibility be demanded of him." 



[49] 



THE INDEPENDENCE OE 1776 AND THE 
LIBERTY OF 1917 

/ can see the day when our harbors will be filled with 
the mass of ships returning from abroad and bringing 
back our soldiers. They will come with their ranks 
thinned by sacrifice, but with themselves glorified by ac- 
complishment; and when they tell us that they have won 
the fight for democracy in Europe, we must be able to 
tell them in return that we have kept the faith of de- 
mocracy at home. 

Independence Day Celebration, The Mayor's 

Committee, the Stadium, College of the City 

OF New York, July 4, 19 17. 

IN 1776, on the 4th day of July, a nation was 
born, dedicated to a new theory of govern- 
ment and a new ideal of human liberty. On the 
4th day of July, 191 7, our newspapers announced 
throughout the continent, to a people who for 
nearly one hundred and fifty years have known 
political liberty, and with it unexampled prog- 
ress, that an expeditionary force of their sol- 
diers had landed, without the loss of a man, on 
the soil of France to defend in that place the 
great principle of democracy and liberty under 
which they have thrived so long. 

In passing, it will be deemed appropriate for 
[50] 



INDEPENDENCE, 1776— LIBERTY, 1917 

me to pay a tribute of thanks from the Army to 
the Navy for the superb way in which they ac- 
quitted themselves of the grave responsibility of 
that convoy. And I think I can say to the 
American people that the splendid cooperation 
between the Navy and the Army which charac- 
terized this first martial exploit is a promise of 
a happy and effective cooperation in the future. 
So that we can look forward to the American 
Army and the American Navy, the two strong 
arms of the American people on many glorious 
fields and on many glorious seas, sustaining the 
traditions of our country and establishing for- 
ever the belief that free men in a battle for free- 
dom need fear no foe. 

One of the traditional policies of the United 
States from its beginning has been the avoid- 
ance of entangling alliances. The United States 
is in no entangling alliance. We are in this war 
upon no sordid mission of any sort. We do not 
seek to take the possessions of any other people 
or to impose by force our will upon any other 
people in the making of their government or by 
an encroachment upon their rights. But after 
a patience absolutely unparalleled and after an 
effort worthy of our civilization to accomplish 
the recognition of our rights and of our free- 
dom, by diplomacy and by every peaceful art, 
America is in arms now to vindicate upon the 
battlefield the right of democracy to exist against 
the denials of autocracy. ^ 

[51] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

Things have come to a pass in this world 
where all mankind must choose whether the na- 
tions of the earth are to be autocratic in their 
government and militarist in their pretensions 
or democratic in their governments and just in 
their pretensions. 

America has chosen — nay, she chose in 1776 
— to be democratic in her policies and in her gov- 
ernment, and our whole history in the years since 
then justifies the statement that our people are 
wedded and devoted to the idea of international 
justice as the rule by which nations shall live to- 
gether in peace and amity upon the earth. 

So that when we entered this war we entered 
it in order that we and our children and our 
children's children might fabricate a new and 
better civilization under better conditions, enjoy- 
ing liberty of person, liberty of belief, freedom 
of speech and freedom as to our political insti- 
tutions. We entered this war to remove from 
ourselves, our children and our children's chil- 
dren the menace which threatened to deny us 
that right. 

I want to appeal to you and to all Americans. 
Never, during the progress of this war, let us 
for one instant forget the high and holy mission 
with which we entered it, no matter what the 
cost, no matter what the temptation. 

Modern times have witnessed many new 
things. The great science of medicine and sani- 

[52] 



INDEPENDENCE, 1776— LIBERTY, 1917 

tation has wonderfully advanced, and all the 
safeguards that knowledge and science can throw 
around our soldiers are to be placed about them. 
And in the great encampments, where they are 
to be trained, modern recreation experts are to 
provide wholesome and attractive amusements 
for their leisure, so that when they come out of 
the Army they will have no "scars except those 
honorably won in warfare against the enemy 
of their country. 

We must look forward to the end of this great 
business. We at home must fight for democ- 
racy here as our armies for it abroad. In the 
midst of our military enterprises we must be 
equally loyal to our own political theories here. 
All this vast reorganization of industry must 
be made without the loss of the great physical 
and social gains which we have achieved in the 
last sevenscore years, mostly years of peace and 
fruitful effort and toil. . 

We must not allow the hours and conditions 
of people who work and labor in factories and 
workshops to be upset and interfered with. We 
must preserve the sweetness of our rights. We 
must agree in deeds of grace here, as our sol- 
diers do deeds of grace on the other side, for 
I can see the day when our harbors will be filled 
with the mass of ships returning from abroad 
and bringing back our soldiers. 

They will come, it may be with their ranks 
somewhat thinned by sacrifice, but with them- 

[53] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

selves glorified by accomplishments; and when 
those heroes step off the boats and tell us that 
they have won the fight for democracy in Eu- 
rope, we must be able to tell them in return that 
we have kept the faith of democracy at home 
and won battles here for that cause while they 
were fighting there. The end of this whole 
matter is that when this war is over and it is 
definitely determined among the children of men 
that autocracy is bidden to veil its face forever; 
when government becomes all over the world 
merely the instrument of enlightened popular 
will and judgment; when the interests of the 
lowest and the least in every society are vital to 
the welfare and the interest of all that society; 
when the rule of the people is established in the 
world and the historians write it down that 
America, born in freedom and dedicated to lib- 
erty, has saved that great doctrine for the sal- 
vation of mankind — it will then be said that in 
191 7 we arrayed our Nation and sent to the war 
our soldiers; that we sustained them by our in- 
dustrial enterprises at home; that we kept our 
national spirit pure and undefiled; and that the 
dawn of liberty for men all over the world dates 
from that day when our soldiers landed in 
France and began the final battles of freedom. 



[64] 



THE BATTLE OF THE ENGINEERS 

/ hope that some day the pretensions of dynasties and 
the contentions of autocracy will he swept into the waste- 
basket of a forgotten age. 

Society for the Promotion of Engineering 
Education, Washington, July 7, 191 7. 

THE art of war has always depended upon 
such science as there was at the time. If 
we take science out of the war in which we are 
now engaged we would be back to the stone axe 
and the javelin. If it be true, as I think it is, 
that the engineer is the transmuter of the means 
of science into the accomplishments of modern 
industry and modern civilization, then there is a 
message that can be given to those interested in 
the promotion of engineering education. 

Before attempting, however, to state what I 
think the mission of the engineering schools is, 
it may not be inappropriate for me to say as a 
truism that never before in the history of the 
world has science and engineering been as vital 
to the conquest of war as it is now. The head- 
quarters of a general in the field is now com- 
posed not merely of adjutants and couriers of 

[55] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

military character, but every commanding gen- 
eral, I suppose, in this war is surrounded by 
scientists and engineers, and no important mili- 
tary operation can now be undertaken upon 
what were at one time purely military considera- 
tions; there must be concerted, for the guid- 
ance of the commanding general, scientific data 
with regard to the earth, the sky, and the waters 
under the earth. 

The place of the geologists, the place of the 
constructing engineers, is at the council table 
of the commanding general, and strategy in 
war no longer consists of mere movements of 
masses of men, but it takes into account accu- 
rate and scientific knowledge of the physical sur- 
roundings and the physical conditions, and that, 
of course, can be brought to the coordinate 
judgment of the commanding general only by 
the aid of engineers. 

This is true not only of the active military 
operations conducted in the field; it is true in a 
very much larger sense of all that goes into the 
preparation of military activities. The electri- 
cal engineer is now as much a part of the En- 
gineering Corps and the Coast Artillery Corps 
in defense of the country as any purely military 
officer. That is merely descriptive of a situa- 
tion. But the thing you are to consider is what 
contribution ought now to be made by those in- 
stitutions which are devoting themselves to the 
production of engineers for the emergency in 

[56] 



THE BATTLE OF THE ENGINEERS 

which the Government and the Nation finds it- 
self. We are at war with one of the greatest 
powers in the world, with a power that at the be- 
ginning of the war was the greatest military 
power on earth. Our adversary has reverted, 
has gone back to ancient and, we believe, bar- 
barous methods. Our duty is to answer every 
nation that has gone back to inhuman methods; 
to answer by taking an advanced method and 
by bringing to the Government the latest and 
most scientific devices; to answer our adversary 
by wiser and more effective preparation, with 
superior knowledge and advanced positions of 
a scientific kind, so that we will overcome by 
deserving to overcome, by using the latest re- 
sources of mankind to resist his aggression. 

Most of you gentlemen are connected with 
engineering schools. We have in the Army a 
certain number of engineers, but this is no oc- 
casion for us to rely upon the handful of techni- 
cal assistants which the Government has under 
its constant service. There must be coordina- 
tion of the scientific talent of the whole country. 
There must be added all of the scientific genius 
and knowledge of the country. The man in the 
trenches who shoulders a gun and stands face 
to face with his adversary is doing a more strik- 
ing and a more heroic job, but the man in the 
laboratory is doing a work by which our soldiers 
may be less exposed in warfare ; in other words his 

[57] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

aim will be to bring a maximum efficiency with a 
minimum of loss, and this is as truly a necessary 
task. 

The progress in the art of war is from day to 
day, not from year to year. There must be the 
same sort of response by the engineering scien- 
tists of this country. In addition to that, an 
even larger subject is the relation of engineering 
education and technical education to the prospec- 
tive needs of the country. We are in need of 
fresh accessions of trained young men from the 
technical schools of the country. Our Coast Ar- 
tillery and our Engineer 4epartments are in con- 
stant need of large accessions and they can get 
them at their very best from the schools you 
gentlemen are associated with. It therefore be- 
comes the necessary thing that in peace time the 
great engineering schools of the country should 
in large part contribute to the actual organization 
of the Army a substantial part if not the major 
part of peace-time preparation for our defense 
should aggression force us into defensive action. 

I hope, therefore, if the thing can be made con- 
crete, that it will be assumed that one of the func- 
tions of the colleges and technical schools mainly 
devoted to these subjects ought to be so to 
modify the curricula of their schools that the 
young men who have special aptitude for the 
scientific things which are useful in military sci- 
ence will have an opportunity to develop their 
aptitude and bring their talent to the aid of their 

[58] 



THE BATTLE OF THE ENGINEERS 

country either for peace-time preparation or in 
an emergency such as faces the country now. 

So that my suggestion to you gentlemen is 
that all of the engineering and scientific talent 
of the country — and the utmost pressure should 
be devoted to this end — should study the solution 
of the scientific problems presented by the war. 
You ought to expedite the training of young men 
for immediate use by the Government in this 
great emergency, and you ought to look forward 
for the future to a large contribution of your 
great engineer schools and colleges and to corre- 
lating the training so that it will be very easy for 
the young men to render a maximum assistance 
to the Government if the emergency comes. 

Nobody knows what the world is going to be 
like when this war is over. No imagination is 
able to picture the sort of civilization the world 
will have after this conflict. Nobody can say 
how long this war is going to last. But we do 
know that when this war is over the rehabili- 
tation of a stricken if not paralyzed civiliza- 
tion is going to be a long-drawn-out and up- 
hill task, and there will be need on every hand 
for trained minds, for trained and schooled men. 
That day of the engineer will be indeed the great 
day. Men should then be present in very large 
numbers to help bring about the rehabilitation 
of industries, and reconstruction upon an earth 
which has been swept by an all-consuming con- 
flagration. 

[59] 



FRONTIERS OP FREEDOM 

And so I think you ought to have as an es- 
pecial object the urgent invitation to young men 
of America to come into your technical schools 
and devote themselves to engineering branches 
of education; so that when this war is over our 
struggle will not have been in vain; that our 
young men can quickly and efficiently play their 
part in reconstruction. 

We have just emerged into the twentieth cen- 
tury, and it seems there are just a few of the 
legacies of the nineteenth century that must 
be eradicated. When the reconstruction of the 
world takes place; when a finer and better civili- 
zation has been worked out; when the human 
race puts its shoulder to the wheels of industry 
and begins to spread abroad the incalculably val- 
uable discoveries of science, I can imagine that 
a new history of the world will be written. And 
it will date, I think, from this great war, when 
men realized perhaps for the first time in a fun- 
damental way that the waste in conflict was an 
irrecoverable waste; that the upkeep of enor- 
mous armies was too great a burden to bear; 
and that the real happiness of mankind is based 
upon those peaceful pursuits which aim to make 
available the great resources of the world. 



[60] 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AN OFFICER 

OF THE ARMY OF THE UNITED 

STATES 

We are in the business of making the world safe for 
democracy; but we are also in the business of shozving to 
the world what we for a long time have known, that de- 
mocracy is safe for the world! 

Conclusion of the First Officers' Training 
Camp, Fort Myer, Va., August 13, 191 7. 

FOR a long time the Army of the United 
States was such an Army as a great Nation 
bent on the ideals of peace might with propriety 
have; an Army of men of the highest character 
and most perfect training, but small in number; 
and when this great occasion of war arose, the 
quality of that Army became instantly apparent, 
for in all the training camps scattered throughout 
the country the same story has been told. Young 
men in large numbers have been received, for the 
most part without previous military service, and 
in an incredibly short space of time have been 
made to march and feel and act like veterans. 
Thus our Regular Army has shown its vitality 
by its capacity for rapid absorption and expan- 
sion. I congratulate ourselves, and the whole 

[61] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

country, upon the fact that at the call of the 
country there could be assembled in these 
training camps, and so rapidly, such numbers 
of men without previous experience and train- 
ing, but of a quality and character to take on 
readily these new capacities and aptitudes which 
are required in order that they may be officers 
of the new Army. 

We have for many many years thought most 
of peace, and there were certainly many peo- 
ple who doubted whether we could, in a short 
space of time, develop the national capacity for 
great military effort. But whatever doubts may 
have been entertained at any time on that sub- 
ject have been dispelled by you gentlemen in this 
camp and your associates and fellows in the 
other training camps of the United States. It 
has not been very long since I first saw you 
here upon the third day of your assembling. 
Even then you had begun to acquire the setting 
up and the appearance of soldiers, and in these 
few short weeks you have acquired, as it seems 
to my eye, the proficiency of men of long devo- 
tion to military pursuits. It is an inspiration to 
us in this country to feel that in our colleges, on 
our athletic fields, in our daily social life, there is 
not a deadening inertia, but there are latent ca- 
pacities ready for rapid development, so that as 
a free and peace-loving democracy we can count 
with certainty upon the presence of these ele- 
ments and upon the strength and daring of any 

[62] 



HESPONSIBILITY OF AN ARMY OFFICER 

organizations which are necessary to defend the 
Nation in the hour of need. 

I shall not, of course, discuss the cause of 
this war; that issue has been settled for the 
people of the United States, and our country 
has gone into the conflict, not tossing its cap in 
the air, but with the moral law written on its 
heart, stimulating and encouraging its every 
energy. You gentlemen have been trained now 
to be the first set of officers in the National Army, 
and in a short time you will be ofif in other places 
receiving the young men of this country and 
molding them into an army. The men who are 
to come to you have not been selected by the old 
process of volunteering, chiefly for the reason 
that under modern war conditions, involving all 
the energies of a nation, that method of selection 
is not sufficiently discriminating, and so another 
process — one in which the Nation lays down the 
rules and exercises the choice — has been devised 
for inviting the young men of the country to 
assemble in the Nation's Army. 

These young men are considered as being in- 
trusted to the Government, and you are the rep- 
resentatives of the Government in receiving them, 
for the purpose of being disciplined, instructed, 
drilled, and ultimately used in the defense of 
the principles upon which this Government rests. 

I want you always to remember that you are 
officers of a democratic army, that discipline 
with us at least is not devised for the creation 

[63] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

of pleasant emotions in a man who gives an 
order, and humiliation in a man who receives it, 
but is devised for the purpose of executing the 
common will and of preserving the common right ; 
in short, in the giving of an order you are the 
trustees of the common voice to execute the com- 
mon will and preserve the common safety. There- 
fore, your duty as officers is to remember that the 
men in the ranks, like yourselves, are citizens and 
members of a free people, that all the obedience 
and discipline necessary to effect the common 
purpose is appropriate and proper; and yet that 
the human relations in an army of a free people 
are important, and the surroundings, the welfare, 
the happiness, and the life of every man in- 
trusted to you to command, is a part of the wealth 
of this Nation intrusted to you to use most care- 
fully, and to return with the utmost safety you 
can. 

The progress that the Nation is making in 
the organization of its forces is a progress as- 
tonishing to those who doubted the vitality of 
democracy as a form of government. We are 
in the business of making, in the phrase of the 
President, "the world safe for democracy," but 
we are also in the business of showing to the 
world, what we for a long time have known, 
that democracy is safe for the world. 

You will go from this camp to places scattered 
all over the United States. Some of you may meet 
again in Army experience, and some of you may 

[64] 



RESPONSIBILITY OF AN ARMY OFFICER 

not. You have been given here esprit de corps; 
you have been given the best traditions of the 
Army and the Nation. I ask each of you to feel, 
in whatever company you may be, wherever you 
are associated with men who wear the uniform 
of our country, that you are a trustee of the 
Nation's honor and of the Nation's interest, and 
that it is your duty to pass along to those whom 
you, in turn, shall train, the highest inspiration 
and the splendid traditions which you have re- 
ceived at the hands of those who trained you 
here. 



{^^1 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

// nobody had ever known honesty, it would have oc- 
curred to some scalawag to invent it, for it pays. 

Labor Day Celebration, Newport News, Va., 

September 3, 19 17. 

I FIRST want to call your attention to two 
things about the United States. There is 
no other country in the world which has in the last 
twenty-five or thirty years made such amazing 
progress in all the mechanical arts. The ingenu- 
ity and skill of our workmen has so transcended 
that of any other country in the world that we 
may say without boasting that ours is the first 
industrial country of the world. And, second, I 
want you to note that there is no country in the 
world which, during the same period of years, 
has made so much progress in realising the im- 
portance of the life and health and welfare of 
the worker to the nation as the United States. 
I can remember that when I was a boy I used to 
be told in Sunday School that all men were 
brothers and because of this sonship in a common 
faith, because of this brotherhood of men, we 
owed one another an obligation of care, solicitude 
and kindness. But that was a somewhat ill-defined 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

and indefinite thing. We have made this discovery 
in the United States — that we are brothers not 
merely in the sense of a common faith but in an 
economic sense; that we are so tied together in 
this modern world of industrialism that the wel- 
fare of every man in society is of vital importance 
to every other man in society. It used to be thought 
that when a man had made a fortune, as it is 
called, he could retire in happiness and that the 
rest of mankind was to him a matter of indiffer- 
ence; but now we have learned in America that 
no man is so rich or so great as to be removed 
from the necessary and vital interest in the wel- 
fare of the poorest man in America. We have 
discovered that if it be the fate of any group in 
society to have learned to neglect the welfare of 
its workers, that group is doomed to decay, dis- 
integration and dissolution, because this fact has 
been brought home to the people — that the wel- 
fare of a nation depends not upon the number of 
its rich men nor the number of its wise men, nor 
the quantity of wisdom nor richness, but it de- 
pends upon the plane upon which the great mass 
of mankind lives. If that be elevated a point, 
there come into the life of the worker sweetness, 
recreation and repose. If the door of opportunity 
is open to the children of the worker, there is 
predestined continuous progress and success. Now 
as a consequence of our having reached that idea, 
these things have been achieved in America and 
we have made great ethical gains. . . . America 

[67] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

is at the top among the nations of the world by 
reason of this fact — that we have compulsory and 
universally free education, and that in the last 
twenty-five or thirty years, this process of educa- 
tion has gone on until we have written upon the 
statute books of the various States wise and 
prudent laws restricting the hours of labor of 
women employed in workshops and factories. 
Five, nearly six, million women in the United 
States earn their own living and the whole mind 
of America has been awakened to the fact that 
the mothers of the future generation cannot be 
sacrificed by too long hours or by insanitary con- 
ditions without imperiling the generation that is 
to follow. 

One of the things that most interested me when 
I first became interested in public affairs was child 
labor. I remember how I used to point to the 
mines of Pennsylvania and other places where 
little children of nine, even seven, years of age 
were employed long hours, with the result that 
their little backs became bent, they became weak 
and the whole vitality of the nation was threat- 
ened by that assault upon its vigor. We used to 
point out that while we were working children in 
the factory nine or ten hours a day, insanity was 
increasing so that there was not a State which 
had room enough in its asylums for its insane, nor 
room in its prisons for its convicts. As Mayor 
of a great city, I used to stand in the police court 
and see young men sixteen or seventeen years of 

[68] 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

age who had been put into mills and factories be- 
fore they had had any education. Their con- 
sciences and minds had been enfeebled so that 
they yielded to the temptations of a great city, 
and gave themselves up to crime. In the 
twenty years which have elapsed since that day 
there is not a State which has not prohibited that 
sacrifice of the youth of our country; all over this 
land we find our workshops inspected by public 
inspectors who report the sanitary conditions un- 
der which they work and there is going on a 
gradual elevation of the life of the whole people 
of the United States as a consequence of an 
awakening on the part of the people to the fact 
that right pays. I remember reading a statement 
that if nobody had ever known honesty, some 
scalawag would have invented it because it pays. 
Right always pays. 

Every now and then somebody tells me that 
the people of the United States have not yet 
realized that there is a war. You realize it. I 
don't suppose it is possible for anybody to cast 
his eyes over these waters without knowing 
that war is going on. . . . How very different 
this reaHzation is now from 19 14, when war 
started. When the war first broke out, I have 
no doubt everybody in this room was puzzled as 
to what caused it to break out. We read the 
newspapers with the thought: "This is another 
one of those questions which pass the compre- 
hension of us over here." Later we saw that it was 

[69] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

becoming a universal question. We found that the 
Central Empires were drawing themselves to- 
gether and practically dividing the civilization 
of the rest of mankind. We found that Russia, 
great, vast, sleeping Russia, a land long gov- 
erned by tyranny but a land predestined to a 
great future (and you and I will all live to see 
the day when the kinship between Russia and the 
United States will show the development of a 
democracy of which we can claim to have been 
in some sense the authors, and of which we will 
always be the partners and beneficiaries) — we 
found that Russia was involved; then England 
was brought into it. Then we began to find this 
strange thing, that, instead of being a war about 
the Balkans or about some obscure question, 
it was in reality a war to settle a question which 
affects every man who lives on the face of the 
earth. That question is not whether Serbia shall 
apologize to Austria, but that question is: — 
''Are men created to be the slaves of a State or 
is the State created to be the servant of men?" 
I need not summarize the philosophy of the 
Central Empires to you. The people of Germany 
have been taught to believe that German culture, 
German civilization is so much better than any 
other civilization or culture in the world that it 
is their duty to force it upon the rest of the world, 
and to kill all the rest of the world in the process 
if necessary. I am not stating it too strongly; 
I am not stating it more strongly than their 

[^0] 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

own philosophers have stated it. Our theory has 
been other than that. We have inherited the 
beUef that the State is an association or part- 
nership, organized by a number of persons for the 
purpose of attending to their common affairs, so 
that their lives can be lived in peace and security. 
We have come to a place where it is to be decided 
which of these philosophies is right; whether 
autocracy or democracy shall rule; whether the 
true life of men is that of servitude or that of 
liberty and freedom. We were attending to our 
own business and we tried to be as neutral as we 
could, when the Central Powers suddenly began 
more and more ruthlessly to encroach upon 
our rights. They announced and lived up to the 
policy that nothing should stand between them 
and success and that they would not merely over- 
ride their enemies but they would crush the life 
out of neutrals and friends if necessary to accom- 
plish their purpose. 

It seems a remote thing and yet every time I 
close my eyes I can see the docks at Queenstown 
— the boats coming in and landing women and 
childreUj mothers dead with babes clutched in 
their arms. All day long that procession comes 
until at nightfall there lie on those docks hun- 
dreds of people, many American men and Ameri- 
can women; many American babies slaughtered 
by the juggernaut of German Imperialism. 

Our country, under the leadership of her Presi- 
dent, was very peaceful. We are a peaceful peo- 

[71] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

pie by nature. Our preference is for the paths 
of peace. We love to do justice rather than to 
make war and so, by all the arts of diplomacy, 
we sought composition with our mad adversary, 
until finally, after we had received promises 
readily made but ruthlessly broken, after it be- 
came perfectly evident that indiscriminate war 
was to be made upon every man, woman and child 
in the universe, and after it became apparent that 
all America's rights were involved, then the Ad- 
ministration, the Congress and the people of the 
United States determined that we should go in 
and help put an end both to this false philosophy 
and to these murderers of civilized practices. 

And so we are in this war. We are not stir- 
ring up evil passions in ourselves about individu- 
als. I think I can say that I do not hate any 
man, German or otherwise, in this world; but I 
know that the American people have a relentless 
and unalterable determination to stay in this 
struggle until this reign of terrorism is forever 
banished and the relations of nations and peoples 
upon the earth are established upon a basis of 
justice and equality instead of limitless power and 
insane ambition. 

Some people say that they do not know how 
long the war will last. I do ! It will last until we 
win it. When it has been won, we shall not pun- 
ish, we shall not undertake to defy the laws of 
nature and the wishes of men; but with victory 
in one hand, we will try to bring benefaction in 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

the other and bind up the wounds of the human 
race. Now why do I say this to you? There 
are in this audience some young men wearing 
the uniform of our country and it may be their 
lot to fight in the trenches on the Western Front. 
Most of this audience is made up of men and 
women who can never bear that kind of a part 
in the struggle. But you can bear another kind 
of part in the struggle — and that one of tremen- 
dous importance. Under modern conditions, wars 
are not made by soldiers only, but by nations. The 
man who is at the riveting hammer in this ship- 
building yard, the man who drives the trains that 
take the goods to the people abroad ; the clerk who 
enters upon his records the things to be shipped 
— every man, woman and child in the United 
States is contributing to the aggregate of our 
national strength in this cause. Since we first 
began, I have been thrown much with labor 
and its representatives. I have learned to love 
and admire the abilities, loyalty and patriotism of 
Samuel Gompers and his associates. I have 
learned to know that labor is loyal, that labor 
is part of this country in its determination to win 
the war. I want to ask you especially who live 
at Newport News, in this great center, this bee- 
hive of war activity, — I want to ask you to inspect 
your own efforts with this kind of reflection: — 
Pick out some boy in uniform and remember that 
some day he may be under fire and the thing 
between life and death for him may be some 

[73] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

thing that you are doing in Newport News. 
Whenever you strike a rivet, men, regard it as 
an act for justice and liberty. Do your share 
here in order that success may come to those 
abroad. Then when this is all over; when the 
clock that God has fixed in His watch-tower 
strikes twelve upon this horrible series of events, 
— when that time comes, America, by the coop- 
eration of her workers and her statesmen, by the 
cooperation of her soldiers abroad and her sol- 
diers at home, will have built up a true democracy 
of feeling among us, so that we can enter into 
the life which is to follow this great struggle, 
hand in hand. The distinctions and differences 
will be broken down among us and a common pur- 
pose created so to elevate the general life of our 
country that the future generations of men and 
women will get out of this war benefits that will 
compensate for the losses and sacrifices which we 
are called upon to put into it. I want the blood of 
every American boy which must needs be spilled 
abroad, — if any must be spilled there, — I wantthe 
labor on this side of the ocean and on that side 
given as a fructifying influence for true democ- 
racy, and for the greater day to come when na- 
tions will live together, bound in ties of justice 
and arbitrating their disputes, taking common 
council among themselves in order to improve the 
conditions of men everywhere. So that when the 
historian writes the story of this war, he will 
close the chapter with the statement that out of 

[74] 



LABOR'S DIGNITY AND ITS DUTY 

this great struggle of the human race there arose 
an heroic quality of spirit which, transmuted into 
works, ennobled the people and the faith of man- 
kind on earth. 



[75] 



THE MARCH TOWARD LIBERTY 

For a thousand years children will read in their hooks 
of history, and the literature of the world will he enriched 
with the poetry and romance growing out of this age in 
ivhich we live. We pour out our treasures, not at the 
feet of the God of War, hut into the lap of the Goddess 
of Liberty! 

Liberty Loan Meeting^ Keith's Theater,, 
Washington, October 8, 1917. 

IN this center of the nation's activity; in this 
city, which since we went into this war has 
perhaps doubled in population ; in this city where 
ihe once peaceful beauty of a quiet capital has 
given place to almost feverish preparation and 
activity, there seem to be obvious lessons on every 
street and in every house, of the character of the 
task which the nation has assumed ; and yet it is 
not inappropriate that a few words should 
be said that will give some comprehension, per- 
haps, of the size of that task and bring home its 
patriotic lesson to the people who are privileged 
to live thus close to the center of the nation's 
life. 

Eor a thousand years, children will read in 
their books of history and the literature of the 
world will be enriched with the poetry and ro- 

[76] 



THE MARCH TOWARD LIBERTY 

mance growing out of this age in which we live. 
The stories which will then be told, are the his- 
tory which is now being made, and I delight, in 
moments of idleness, to try to project myself into 
that remote and distailt future and see the bent 
figure of some school-boy as he pores over the 
history of this period; I think I can detect even in 
a boy so remote from the action of this time, the 
surge of enthusiasm in the things that the world 
is now doing. 

I shall not undertake in the very brief time 
allotted for this address, to recount the history 
of the European War prior to our entrance into 
it nor the occasion for our entrance. But if there 
be anything certain about a contemporaneous es- 
timate of the historical facts, the verdict of his- 
tory will be that this, the first great free nation 
of the world — in this age the greatest nation in 
the world, in material resources, and in the prog- 
ress she has made — was also the greatest nation 
on the face of the earth at this time in her moral 
quality and in the superb patience with which 
she endeavored to avert this catastrophe. 

For long and weary months, with our minds 
daily harrowed and our hearts nightly torn with 
the stories of destruction, devastation, crueltyand 
despoliation of peoples everywhere, we still hoped 
against hope that the war could be brought to a 
conclusion, just to mankind and promising for 
future progress, without the unsheathing of our 
sword. 

[77] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

When, finally, after one bitter evidence had 
accumulated upon another, and we realized that 
this was really the final war of two great phil- 
osophies ; and when we as Americans realized that 
the nations fighting on what we now call our 
side were really children of our spirit and bap- 
tized with the notion of liberty which we had 
fostered in this country for over a hundred 
years; and when we realized that England, 
France, Italy and Russia were fighting the 
battle not for selfish aggrandizement, but for lib- 
erty and opportunity, and for the philosophy of 
democracy on the part of the whole world, it be- 
came necessary for us to join with them in order 
to vindicate that philosophy. 

On the bottom of the pathless ocean lie now the 
bones and the bodies of American men, women 
and children slain while we were still neutral, in 
defiance of every law that man ever ordained for 
the limitation of the horrors of war. Our spe- 
cial grievance was only the occasion, and now 
that we are entered in this great conflict, we 
realize, with an inspiration that I think must fire 
every man, that this is merely the second stage in 
the march of the human race toward liberty. It 
began in 1776. In 19 17 we pass the next mile- 
stone, and when it is passed, men and women 
everywhere will realize that no return of the 
Darker Age is possible ; that victory has been won 
in this contest, autocracy having been demon- 
strated as too wasteful and too regardless of 

[78] 



THE MARCH TOWARD LIBERTY 

human life and human treasure to be tolerated, 
and democracy having been demonstrated to be 
not only the source of fruitful happiness and op- 
portunity in time of peace, but to contain in 
itself the strength to survive. Having thus 
demonstrated the feebleness and viciousness of 
the principle of autocracy and the virility and 
salvation of the principle of democracy, we will 
start from a fresh platform with a new idea of 
its possibilities and a new hold upon permanent 
liberty and democratic institutions. 

As a result, this country presents a strange but 
inspiring spectacle. I have had some opportu- 
nity at Washington to participate in the formu- 
lation of plans, and out of Washington, I have 
had some opportunity to see the fruition of those 
plans. In sixteen places in this country cities 
have been built, as it seems, over night, housing 
great multitudes of peoples — thirty and forty 
thousand young men selected out of the body of 
our men ; not in response to a sudden impulse of 
the military power, but selected by the civilian 
agencies of our people and presented to our gov- 
ernment to be trained as a great army to partici- 
pate in this reconquest of the world's liberty. 
Thus great cities have been built. 

Where we used to spend five, ten, or fifteen 
millions of dollars, we are now spending money 
that counts up in the billions. We are financing 
to some extent those associated with us in this 
war who have been long bearing the drain and 

[79] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

strain of continuous warfare. We are spending 
money for munitions of war and for supplies, and 
our factories are responding with extraordinary 
energy. In workshops, factories, stores, the peo- 
ple of America have associated themselves in this 
great enterprise until our nation, our peaceful 
and peace-loving nation, is to-day knit together in 
spirit, more harmonious in its aspirations, more 
effective in its occupations. We are more of a 
nation to-day than we have been at any time in 
the whole hundred years and more of our glorious 
history. 

I have stood at those camps and watched the 
boys who are preparing to be soldiers. I have 
seen them stream past by tens of thousands; 
some of them fresh-called to the colors from 
homes in remote places, far from the great rush 
of the world's events; some of them students, 
from colleges; some of them engineers, men of 
occupations, professions, science; and as I 
have seen those youthful faces I have had a new 
realization of the springs of national action. As 
I saw those men I could not persuade myself that 
all of them were deeply read in the history of the 
world; I could not persuade myself that they 
knew the ultimate nature of this conflict of free- 
dom with autocracy in the world; but there they 
marched with the sun shining on their faces, with 
flushed health in their cheeks, determination and 
a heroic quality about them that simply pervaded 
the atmosphere. And I realized that it is not 

[80] 



THE MARCH TOWARD LIBERTY 

necessary for a man to be a philosopher or a 
scholar to be a patriot, that there is something 
subtle in the very character of our soil that goes 
into the system of those born on it, and that this 
great army of young men reaching from the 
Pacific to the Atlantic, and now streaming across 
the Atlantic are men who possess that subtle 
quality and are filled with the spirit of patriotism, 
and that when our forces actually join with those 
on the other side the great battle will be won. 

And that schoolboy a thousand years from now 
who reads the history of this age will read with 
admiration and throbbing heart of France — 
leader in the world's civilization, that country 
through which Defoe said every great idea had to 
pass in order that it might be familiarized to the 
world — he will read of that France, not prepared 
for this sort of struggle, devoting herself to the 
redemption of her freedom and protection of her 
soul. When he comes to her glorious victory at 
the Marne, he will experience such a thrill as 
we used to feel as we read the story of Ther- 
mopylae and Marathon. And when he comes to 
read of England he will have a realization of 
the English people which I think is slowly being 
brought home to us all. The English people speak 
of themselves as "muddling through"; but that 
schoolboy a thousand years from now will 
promptly see that that nation, with its terrible 
patience, was able to wait and coordinate its 
military and industrial strength until it arrived at 

[81] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

a point, when it could and did, Avith clock-like 
regularity, beat back the foe. 

Then he will come to our entrance into the war, 
and coupling it up with what he has been read- 
ing before, he will go back to the origin of our 
liberty and see the^ people of this continent, 
having wrought out their own civilization, having 
elevated the individual man to a new dignity in 
world affairs, join the others, and he will realize 
that the victory will belong to the heroic quality 
of these united races. 

He will ask whether all the war, all the victory, 
was won at the front. He will find that war had 
become of such a quality that the fighting 
men are but part of a nation's army, that there 
is required to be at home in the field the grower 
of food and in the factory the maker of products, 
in order that the men at the front may fight ; and 
that underlying the whole structure, is the finan- 
cial stability and the financial willingness of the 
people to fight the fight. 

And so, with this opportunity to subscribe to 
Liberty Bonds, we are appealing now to the very 
foundation of the nation's strength and the indis- 
pensable thing upon which its activities must 
rest, and we ask the people of the United States 
to sacrifice. I have had, since I have been Secre- 
tary of War, thousands of letters from high- 
spirited men and women all over the United 
States, from children nine and ten years old to 
men eighty and ninety, asking me "Where can I 

[82] 



THE MARCH TOWARD LIBERTY 

do my bit? What sacrifice can I make to ad- 
vance this cause?" Some are too young and 
some are too old to fight, but none are too old or 
too young to sacrifice in this great financial 
efifort, which is the basis upon which all must 
rest. 

I can see victory ahead of us ; a victory in arms, 
it is true, but a higher victory than that. I can 
see the American spirit, the unselfish, uncor- 
rupted, untainted spirit of America with which 
we have gone into this struggle, dominant in the 
world as the result of that victory. I can see 
the peace that is to be made as the result of this 
great struggle; and it is a peace which brings us 
no selfish advantage, no national monopoly of 
the goods of the world, the possession of nobody 
else's goods and fortunes as the outcome, but an 
enkindling of a new spirit of justice ; a peace after 
which the nations of the earth will join hands in 
harmonious cooperation rather than in selfish, 
deadly preparation for mutual destruction. And 
in order that there may be a war fought to a vic- 
torious conclusion, a peace so high and beneficent 
as that, those who are carrying forward this 
campaign ask you to pour out your money, not 
at the feet of the God of War, but into the lap of 
the Goddess of lyiberty. 



im 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

/ want them adequately armed by their Government, 
but I want them to have also an invisible armor to take 
with them. 

National Conference on War Camp Community 

Recreation Service^ Washington^ 

October 23, 1917. 

THIS great national emergency presents two 
responsibilities and two opportunities. One, 
of course, is the perpetuation of the principles 
upon which our Government is established, by- 
success against the adversary who has questioned 
our integrity. The other is the coincident upbuild- 
ing of the strength and wholesomeness and viril- 
ity of our own people. The task, or a part of the 
task, which in a special sense has been adopted by 
you, has more to do with the latter than with the 
former of those two opportunities, though it is of 
first importance. 

We are interrupting the normal life of this 
Nation. We are summoning out of their com- 
munities and their homes a vast number of young 
men. We are taking men from their normal 
environments, from their usual occupations; we 
are violently interrupting their customary modes 

[841 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

of thought. Now, everybody knows, of course, 
that one of the great social restraints, one of the 
things that make ordered society possible at all, 
is the existence of a state of social habits on the 
part of a people; that those social habits are the 
things we acquire as we grow up in a community. 
They are enforced by the sanction of personal 
approval of the people with whom we have to 
deal. They are enforced by the approval of 
neighborhood opinion. They constitute the chief 
force for the preservation of order and for the 
progress which society makes. 

I am sure that nearly everybody in this com- 
pany will remember Emerson's description of a 
child's first contact with society, how he goes out 
of his house and finds a policeman, who to him 
represents a restraint, the social restraint, of his 
community. That policeman embodies the idea 
of force in the interest of order; and as the child 
grows up, he gradually enlarges the policeman 
until the policeman becomes the Government. As 
he grows older still, he philosophizes the police- 
man, until the officer represents the consent of the 
community to those sacrifices of individual lib- 
erty which are necessary in the interest of the 
common good. 

Now that state of mind, which exists in every 
community and in every individual, is being vio- 
lently disturbed by our withdrawal of large num- 
bers of young men from their homes, from their 
families, from their social organizations, from 

[85] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

their communities, from their church organiza- 
tions, from all the various affiliations which the 
young men have made as a part of their social 
education. 

We are collecting those young men in vast 
groups and subjecting them to an entirely unac- 
customed discipline. In a certain sense, we are 
training their minds to an entirely new set of 
ideals. We are sweeping away all of the social 
pressures to which they have become accustomed, 
and are substituting therefor military discipline 
during that portion of their time when drill and 
the military regime are necessarily imposed on 
their lives. And we are taking these groups of 
men and bringing them up to and in contact with 
city civilization and town civilization. 

Now a large part of these young men have 
been accustomed to city life. Some of them, 
however, are straight from the country. Some 
of them are from remote parts of the country, 
far away from the places where they have hith- 
erto lived, away from the people whose opinion 
has hitherto been their guide and control. We 
are surrounding the people of this country with 
an entirely new population, a population which 
is not integrated with its life, a great mass of 
people who are encamped on the borders of a 
town or a city and are wholly foreign to the local 
feelings and sentiments of the community. 

Now that presents a very grave problem in 
dealing with human beings. It presents several 

[86] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

problems. The first of them is : What are those 
soldiers going to do to the towns, and what are 
the towns going to do to the soldiers? 

I think it is safe to say that no army ever be- 
fore assembled in the history of the world has 
had so much thought given and so much labor 
performed in the interest of its social organiza- 
tion. It is no reflection on anybody to say that 
the ancient method of assembling an army was 
first to have some sort of inspiring music played 
through the street, to have a local oratorical out- 
burst on the subject of the particular cause for 
which the army was desired, to have young men 
follow the music and then be taken off to make 
their own camps and conditions, and with that 
much training to be sent to the battle front. 

But the United States is a civilized country. 
Nobody realized how civilized it was until we as- 
sembled this army, for instantly there came from 
all parts of the country a demand that this army 
should not be raised as armies hitherto had been ; 
that it should not be environed as armies hitherto 
had been, but that such arrangements should be 
made as would insure that these soldiers, when 
actually organized into an army, would represent 
and carry out the very highest ideals of our 
civilization. 

In the second place, this army came from our 
country. Everywhere there was the demand 
that these young men, whom we were taking 

[87] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

from their homes and families, from wives and 
children, from mothers, sisters and intimates, 
these young men whom we were separating from 
their church environments, their social organiza- 
tions and social clubs — everywhere, I say, there 
was the demand that they should come back with 
no other scars than those won in honorable 
warfare! 

Now the accomplishment of that task is not 
difficult, but it requires a tremendous amount of 
comprehending cooperation and sympathy, and 
this great company of men and women here this 
morning is the answer to that need. It shows 
that the commercial organizations of our coun- 
try, bodies like the Rotary Clubs, those organiza- 
tions which are leaders in their various communi- 
ties, appreciate the demand of the country with 
regard to its soldiers, and are willing to supply 
the social basis for a modern civilized army. 

America has learned, I think, more than any 
other country about the life of adolescent youths. 
There is no other country, to my knowledge, in 
which the task has been so thoroughly done as it 
has been in America by the American colleges 
and higher schools. I have sometimes been rather 
skeptical about the advantage of intercollegiate 
athletics. It has seemed to me to lay the em- 
phasis on the wrong place, and rather to over- 
emphasize the development of the athletic as 
against the mental in the boy. 

When we established training camps for young 
[88] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

officers, the American high schools and colleges 
poured out into the lap of this Nation the finest 
body of material for the rapid manufacture of 
officers that any country ever assembled since the 
beginning of time. And they came to us not 
merely with trained minds, with handsomely de- 
veloped aptitudes for acquiring new habits of 
thought, but they came to us with finely trained 
athletic bodies, and with the American spirit of 
fair play, which, if not born, is at least nurtured 
on the athletic field. If we can do for the boy 
in the training camp what the American college 
has done for the boy in college and what the 
American high school has done for the boy in 
the high school; that is to say, if we can 
work his mind and work his body, and surround 
his moments of recreation and leisure with such 
wholesome opportunities as to keep him from be- 
ing diverted and turned to unwholesome things, 
we have solved the problem. 

For a great many years in America we have 
been struggling almost despondently with the 
problem of the large cities. We knew that the 
large city was economically and industrially more 
efficient. We knew that by getting people close to 
the place where they were to work, getting them in 
large groups, we multiplied the industrial output 
of the individual. We knew that by getting peo- 
ple into large cities we were able to extend over 
a wider surface the so-called conveniences pf 
modern civilization ; that people could live in bet- 

[89] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

ter houses ; that they could have better sanitation ; 
that they could have better medical care ; that they 
could have freer access to public libraries and 
opportunities for culture; that they could have 
better schools. But we realized that we paid a 
price for the city, and that price consisted in the 
tempestuous and heated temptations of city life, 
and every man who has had any opportunity to 
study city life has had his mind more or less held 
in a state of balance between its advantages and 
its disadvantages. 

It used to be said that a family living in a city 
ran out in three generations, and that it was neces- 
sary to replenish the vitality of city-dwelling 
people by constant drafts upon the unspoiled peo- 
ple of the countryside; and that was, we learned, 
because of the vices which grew up in cities, and 
because all of those restraints of neighborhood 
opinion were gone. A boy in the country was 
known to everybody of his neighborhood. His 
misconduct was marked. The boy in the city 
could be a saint in the first ward where he lived, 
and a scapegrace in the tenth ward, without any- 
body in the first ward discovering it. There was 
an absence of that pressure of neighborhood 
opinion, that opportunity to cultivate the good 
opinion of old neighbors, which was evident in 
the countryside where conduct was more obvious. 

Now, for a long time we tried a perfectly 
wrongheaded process about the city; we tried to 
pass laws which would cure all these ills and to 

[90] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

enforce them by policemen. I do not mean that 
we ought not to have some policemen, but 
we imagined that our sole salvation lay in the 
passage of laws and in the employment of police- 
men. And I can remember when I was mayor 
of a middle- Western city, that every now and 
then some movement would get its start to have a 
curfew law passed in that city, to make everybody 
go to bed at a particular time. Certain laws of 
that kind were passed, and some Supreme Courts 
held that they were unconstitutional, and some 
held that they were constitutional, but no court 
had any right to pass on the real fact involved, 
which was that they were ineffective. 

Then the discovery was made that the way to 
overcome the temptations and vices of a great 
city was to offer adequate opportunity for whole- 
some recreation and enjoyment; that if you 
wanted to get a firebrand out of the hand of a 
child the way to do it was neither to club the child 
nor to grab the firebrand, but to offer in exchange 
for it a stick of candy ! 

And so there has grown up in America this 
new attitude, which finds its expression in public 
playgrounds, in the organization of community 
amusements, in the inculcation throughout the 
entire body of young people in the community of 
substantially the same form of social inducement 
which the American college in modern times has 
substituted for the earlier system of social re- 
straints. 

[91] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

And now that we have these great bodies o£ 
young men to consider, we have also the fa- 
cilities which are necessary to apply to the task. 
We have organized in the camps themselves 
agencies to supply athletic opportunities, whole- 
some recreation. The Young Men's Christian 
Association, the Knights of Columbus, the Train- 
ing Camp Activities Committee, are taking up 
just as much of the soldier's unoccupied leisure as 
can be taken up by the inducement process. 

And now we come to the other side of it. 
These boys do not stay in the camp all the 
time; they move out of camp into the nearby 
towns. I took a ride some two or three weeks 
ago along nearly the entire length of Long 
Island. There were two military camps on Long 
Island at that time, the so-called "Rainbow Divi- 
sion" and Camp Upton, which is the cantonment 
in which the drafted men from New York are 
being trained. Long Island — at least the part I 
saw of it — is about ninety miles long, and it was 
dotted throughout that entire ninety miles with 
men in uniform. Every little village, every ham- 
let, every small town and large town had soldiers 
scattered through its streets and its hotels and 
throughout all the places of entertainment to be 
found there. The Chief of Staff, who was rid- 
ing with me, remarked that soldiers always re- 
minded him of ants in the directions in which 
they traveled. They seemed to scatter from the 

[92] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

center in every direction, and for wholly unex- 
pected and unanticipated distances. 

Now that is what we have to face. The sol- 
diers of these camps, in their days off and their 
hours off and in their moments of relaxation, are 
going to scatter through all of the cities and 
towns nearby. The railroads, the street rail- 
roads, and the motor cars will take them to all of 
those centers of population. Now we must make 
the advantages in these towns as wholesome, we 
must make the inducements to wholesome think- 
ing and wholesome living just as fine and as nu- 
merous as we can possibly make them. 

And in order to do that, we must organize every 
social activity in these towns. With that thought 
in view we must have the Y. M. C. A.'s of the 
towns, the Y. W. C. A.'s, the Masonic orders, the 
Elks, the Eagles, the churches — particularly the 
churches with social opportunities, those that 
have large rooms where they can have gymnasi- 
ums or sociables and receptions — even the homes, 
if they happen to be near enough to a camp to 
make it possible, we must have all these invite 
the boys in and give them contact with a normal 
town life and the domestic opportunity which they 
are cut off from by reason of their separation 
from their own homes. I have no doubt there 
are many examples of exactly that sort of thing 
going on in this country. 

Now, you gentlemen, you men and women,"are 
assembled for the purpose of spreading through- 

[93] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

out the communities of this country that attitude 
toward this army, and encouraging in this army 
that attitude toward the cities of this country. 
It is a tremendous problem. It has been par- 
tially worked out, locally. But as this war goes 
on we are going to have more and more camps, 
more and more soldiers, and one set will go and 
another will come. 

These boys are going to France ; they are going 
to face conditions that we do not like to talk about, 
that we do not like to think about. They are go- 
ing into an heroic enterprise, and heroic enter- 
prises involve sacrifices. I want them armed; I 
want them adequately armed and clothed by their 
Government; but I want them to have invisible 
armor to take with them. I want them to have 
an armor made up of a set of social habits re- 
placing those of their homes and communities, a 
set of social habits and a state of social mind 
born in the training camps, a new soldier state of 
mind, so that when they get overseas and are 
removed from the reach of our comforting and 
restraining and helpful hand, they will have got- 
ten such a set of habits as will constitute a moral 
and intellectual armor for their protection over- 
seas. 

You are the makers of that armor. General 
Crozier is going to make the guns ; General 
Sharpe is going to make the clothes ; but the in- 
visible suit which you are making, this attitude of 
mind, this state of consciousness, this esprit de 

[94] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

corps which will not tolerate anything unwhole- 
some, this brand of righteousness, if I may speak 
of it as such, this pride that they ought to have 
in being American soldiers and representing the 
highest ethical type of a modern civilization — all 
this you are manufacturing in your armories, 
in the basements of churches, the lodge rooms of 
societies, the dinner tables of private homes, the 
rooms of Young Men's and Young Women's 
Christian Associations. There are hospitals, 
houses, all manner and kinds of places, where the 
sound consciousness and sound mind of a com- 
munity can be brought into contact, in a whole- 
some and inspiring way, with the soldier group 
in its process of training. 

Now when this is all over, by virtue of the 
work which this committee and this group are 
doing, and are going to do, our soldiers will come 
back to us better citizens, not merely for the patri- 
otic heroism in v/hich they have been engaged, 
but because of this lesson of social values which 
they will have learned. And in the meantime each 
city in this country will have gotten, I think, a 
greater start toward a realization of the com- 
munity responsibility for the lives of people who 
live in it, and near it, a higher realization of the 
value of these experiences which we are putting 
into operation, and a stronger sense of its own 
greatness, by what it has done for the stranger 
within its gates, than it has ever had before. 

So that I see in this work, not merely a con- 
[95] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

tribution to the strength of our Nation, great as 
that is — and I may say that an army is strong 
just as its individual components are strong, and 
a sick soldier, whether physically sick or men- 
tally sick, is a detriment rather than an asset to 
an army — this work is going to contribute not 
only to the strength of the army, making it 
vigorous and sound physically, mentally and 
morally, but it is going to advance the solution of 
that vexing and perplexing and troublesome city 
question which has for so many years hung heavy 
on the conscience of our country. 

And when the war is over, and our boys come 
back, and our cities have strengthened themselves 
by their cooperation, and we have throughout 
the country the common feeling that we all 
helped and shared the pride of having partici- 
pated in this great undertaking and achievement, 
then we will find that for the after-war recon- 
struction, for this great remedial process as to 
which none of us knows much, and of which most 
of us are almost afraid to think, our people are 
sound and virile and intelligent. We will find that 
American public opinion has been strengthened 
and made more wholesome and comprehending, 
that America is truly a more united people, 
and that it understands itself better than it ever 
did in its history. 

Everybody in America wants to help. Most 
people in America want to do some — well, I do 
not want to say that — but many people in 

[96] 



INVISIBLE ARMOR 

America want to do some individual thing. I 
suppose I am just like everybody else. I would 
like to go "over the top." I would like to storm 
a rampart. I would Hke to grab a flag which was 
shot down and raise it up and go forward with it, 
and feel that I had taken Old Glory where it 
ought to be. That is the heroic appeal, but one 
of the great_difficulties of life is that we fail to 
realize that the master heroisms of social prog- 
ress are aggregations of inconspicuous acts of 
self-sacrifice. 

Now this is the opportunity for us to show the 
master heroism of this age. If you will im- 
press that upon the people of your communities, 
I think they will respond, and they will feel, not 
perhaps the spiritual exaltation that comes from 
carrying the flags, but they will feel that they are 
really builders in the final and higher civilization, 
the civilization of justice and opportunity, and of 
high thinking and high doing which we pray is 
to be the permanent state of civilized man after 
this terrible visitation and tragic calamity is 
safely passed. 



[97] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

/ do not love war; yet there are some things dearer than 
life. Would we call hack the Continental Army; would 
we send Lafayette hack to France; would we take the 
sword of Washington out of his hands and hreak it over 
our kneef 

Mass Meeting, The Hippodrome, Cleveland, 

Ohio, October 17, 1917. 

EVERYBODY in this audience will realize 
my feelings in attempting to make a speech 
on this lot and under this tent. I look back over 
nearly twenty years and remember how often this 
tent has been filled with the people of Cleveland as 
they discussed among themselves, sometimes in 
the words of the speaker on the platform, some- 
times of the questioner in the audience, but always 
in a lively way, matters of domestic concern. It 
has also been used in national campaign discus- 
sions. But to-night, I think, is the first time, 
surely the first time within my knowledge, when 
the tent has been used by somebody who came 
from Washington to tell the people of Cleveland 
something about a war in which our great country 
is engaged. 

It is no small task to turn the attention of the 
people of the United States away from the op- 

[98] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AISIERICA 

portunities which they have enjoyed and culti- 
vated in peace to the sterner demands of war. I 
have no doubt that each one of you in your vari- 
ous business occupations has found that this war 
has somewhat changed the relations which you 
sustain to other people, and that your business 
sustains to other people ; but in Washington every 
eye and every ear and every heart is devoted all 
the time to a task larger beyond any comparison 
than any task this nation has yet undertaken, and 
I want to describe to you, if I can, in very brief 
phrase, something of the size and character and 
purpose and hope of that task. 

When I went away from Cleveland to Wash- 
ington, you may recall, peace reigned in the 
United States, though war raged abroad. Wash- 
ington, a city of very great beauty, was a quiet 
and reposeful place, and yet the very night that I 
left Cleveland to go to Washington a disturbance 
broke out on the Mexican border which required 
us to summon a military force to patrol that bor- 
der and protect the lives and property of our 
people in the States of Texas, Arizona and New 
Mexico. And for some months we were raising 
soldiers, the National Guard, and mobilizing our 
army on that border until, finally, we had an 
adequate force there to preserve order between 
the turbulent forces of the Republic of Mexico 
and ourselves. We had a small army. A small 
army was enough. Then the Mexican situation 
seemed to pass away, and our relation to this 

[99] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

struggle across the water became more and more 
serious and more and more difficult. We began 
to be drawn into that struggle. It did not mat- 
ter what our own motives and desires were; it 
did not matter that we were following a policy of 
neutrality and friendship to all the belligerents in 
that contest; it did not matter that we were a 
peace-loving people; that we had devoted our- 
selves for sevenscore years to the building up of 
a civilization which would do away with the neces- 
sity of war and establish among men processes 
for the working out of international difficulties 
which would not need war as a means of arbitra- 
ment — all that made no difference. Inevitably, 
as though some powerful magnet were drawing 
at the very heart and vitals of this country, each 
day seemed to bring us closer to this terrible thing 
that was going on on the other side. No man in 
America wished to go to war. From the Presi- 
dent down to the humblest citizen in all this repub- 
lic our only purpose, our only hope, our only 
prayer was that we might be permitted to be a 
strong and powerful friend to all of those bel- 
ligerents and when the war was over, help to 
reconstruct and adjust our civilization with a 
fairer hope and promise for men everywhere. 
We entertained that view, as you all know, and 
yet, day by day, the situation became more diffi- 
cult. 

Now, just what was the situation ? We found 
that our rights were being trespassed upon. We 

[100] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

found that our present adversary — I shall 
refer to it always as the German Government, 
and I draw a sharp distinction between any gov- 
ernment and its people where that government is 
an autocracy. If you speak of a government 
which is a democracy, you include its people, 
because there the people is the government; but 
when you refer to a government which is an 
autocracy, then you draw a sharp line between 
the government and the people, because the form 
of government gives the governing function to a 
few or a class. We found that our present ad- 
versary, the German Government, was enlarging 
the scope of its activities by pressing its lawless 
conduct upon the shoulders of neutrals, friend 
and foe alike, and we found that the rights of 
the United States were being more and more 
seriously menaced. We still hoped for peace. 
Our President wrote notes of protest; he wrote 
notes of pleading protest, many people believed, 
and up to the very last hour he looked with a deep 
devotion upon the ideal of peace and the hope 
that we could remain, as I have said, a peaceful 
and powerful friend of all these people. 

International law is a system of agreements 
among nations made for the purpose of abating 
the horrors of warfare, and the progress of 
civilization consists, so far as nations and their 
rights are concerned, in constant improvement in 
international law, and in constant amelioration or 
betterment of the horrors and rigors of war. 

[101] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

The progress of mankind is marked by the extent 
to which nations agree to allow the horrors to be 
visited upon the combatants alone and to pro- 
tect the lives and property of innocent and non- 
combatant members, either of a belligerent coun- 
try or a neutral country. 

When men started out to fight it was the prac- 
tice of a successful tribe of savages to kill all the 
men, women and children in the hostile tribe; 
but after a while that was found to be wrong. 
The moral sentiments rebelled against that prac- 
tice, and gradually, step by step, new rules came 
into existence, and those rules finally, at the out- 
break of this European War, made it very plain 
and very clear — it was written in all the books — 
that the struggle of war should be limited to the 
actual armies ; that it was fair and in accordance 
with the laws of war for one army to attempt to 
disable another army, but a civilian popula- 
tion, not armed and not taking part in the con- 
test, should not be subject to attack, and 
neutral people, people who were not in the war, 
were also free from danger and free from peril. 
The difference between civilized people and sav- 
age people consisted in the extent to which people 
recognized those rules. When we came to apply 
the established rules of international law to the 
conduct of the German Government, we found 
that at the very outset, in order to get a momen- 
tary advantage over their surprised and unpre- 
pared adversaries, the German Government 

[102] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

had ordered the German army to march across 
the frontiers of Luxemburg and Belgium and to 
invade two peaceful neutral countries which were 
not involved in the war and had no part or parcel 
in the dispute. 

Now, I shall not undertake to arouse your feel- 
ings about what happened in Belgium, and yet I 
think that this is a fair thing to say: Since the 
days of savage warfare by wholly untrained and 
barbarous peoples — nay, since the days of war- 
fare by cannibals — I think there is no parallel to 
some of the things that were done in some of the 
cities of Belgium. That little country, once so 
bright and beautiful, so gay and carefree — for 
Belgium, you know, was a little France, and Brus- 
sels was in Belgium a kind of little Paris — too 
small to have any aggressive intentions upon any 
other nation; too civilized to have any sort of 
ambition to attack anybody else ; a little, beautiful 
nation, made up of a fine and cultured people that 
gave itself to the arts and crafts and beauties of 
life and to rich manufactures — that little state of 
Belgium, apparently so secure from disaster 
of any kind, and chiefly from the disaster 
of war, has been converted, by the invasion of the 
German army, in many of its places, to heaps of 
smoldering ruins. Not military places only, but 
the churches that used to be filled with the con-' 
gregations that went on Sundays to worship, are 
now simply smoked walls and ruins. The 
sacred pictures and other beautiful works of art 

[103] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

that decorated those churches are all defaced, 
wrecked, as a result of artillery fire. The people 
of Belgium — and I ask you to remember that 
they were innocent of offense, just as innocent as 
you and I — the people of Belgium had placed 
over them a military government. Thousands 
of them were taken out and lined up against walls 
and shot, whole villages, cities, were set on fire; 
soldiers invaded the houses and drove out, not 
men with guns in hand^ but all the occu- 
pants, men, women and children, while other 
soldiers outside slew them with the sword or with 
the gun, until of three cities it is true to say that 
not one soul was left. The destruction reminds 
us of those stories in ancient history when a sav- 
age adversary leveled the city to the ground and 
sowed the place where it once stood with salt in 
order to show that no future civilization was to 
be built there. And these were innocent people ! 
These were people who had done nothing except 
to live in a country standing, by the accident of 
fate, between the autocratic government of Ger- 
many and its surprise attack upon Paris. Then, 
after a little while, we heard that men in Belgium 
were separated from their families and taken into 
involuntary servitude in Germany, so that of the 
nen who were left alive, the able-bodied ones have 
been taken away from their families, away from 
their homes, and their church, and have been car- 
ried off in trainloads into the interior of Ger- 

[104] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

many to work in German munition factories and 
aid the German army. 

Now, I do not complain, I would not complain 
if the German Government were drafting its own 
man-power, or drafting the man-power of an ad- 
versary whom it had conquered in war, but I am 
trying to picture to you the character of our 
adversary's military operations; and, in order to 
have you clearly understand it, I want you to 
realize that the Belgian people were wholly with- 
out offense; that they have been accused of no 
offense by anybody, and yet, in spite of that, such 
was the character of war imposed by the German 
Government that these slaughters and burnings, 
these sums of money exacted by way of tribute, 
these depredations, and this involuntary servi- 
tude were visited upon them. But the story is 
told, and it comes from excellent sources, that so 
stout is the heart of the Belgian, so patriotic 
is he, so keenly does he resent the things 
that have been visited upon him, that, although 
the German Government has taken away thou- 
sands of them in trains and put them into work- 
shops in Germany, it has had to bring them back, 
starved, to die at home rather than keep them in 
Germany when they refused to work under an 
unjust government that had tyrannized in so 
despotic a fashion over them. Belgium really 
presents a wonderful picture. It is a story of 
patriotism that we might well imitate; a patriot- 
ism exemplified best in its noble king; exempli- 

[105] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

fied in its courageous prelate, Cardinal Mercier, 
who, although held in prison, as it were, by the 
captors of his country, has never hesitated for a 
moment to tell his captors of the iniquity of their 
occupation. 

We saw what went on there, and then we saw 
what went on in Servia ; we saw what went on in 
Poland; we saw great stretches of this world of 
ours so laid waste that a year ago there was not 
in many parts of what used to be Poland a single 
child still living under the age of five years. 
Babies all gone! The heel of this kind of war — 
this ruthless war, as it had come to be called — 
trod upon that land until all the child life was 
stamped out, and men and women who were able 
to get away from the advancing power of the 
conqueror fled to the woods and lived on roots 
and leaves of trees and herbs, or starved to death, 
and over Europe now there are places tens of 
thousands of miles in area and extent where the 
bleached bones of men lie who in their lives were 
guilty of no wrong, no aggression, who were not 
partners in this conflict, who had done nothing 
to bring it on, and whose very nations were not 
engaged in the war ! 

Well, all of that went on, and we watched it 
with amazement and with horror, and yet we 
said to ourselves: *'We are separated from it all 
by an ocean three thousand miles wide." The 
great founder of our country, George Washing- 
ton, said to us that we must refrain from en- 

[106] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

tangling alliances. The founders of this repub- 
lic taught us that our destiny was here and not 
there; and so there still seemed to be a lack of 
personal occasion in all this to us. Then we be- 
gan to consider the aggressions upon our own 
rights. Is there anybody in this audience who 
has forgotten how he felt on the day when the 
Lusitania was sunk — the fairest ship in the world, 
filled with passengers going abroad on their own 
business, protected by every line of international 
law? Germany herself afterwards admitted that 
the destruction of that ship was against and in 
contravention of the Law of Nations. Not 
merely international law written by England or 
France or America, but their own book on inter- 
national law, written by a German authority, pro- 
tected the innocent travelers upon that ship. Yet, 
as she sailed across the sea, carrying this precious 
freight of men, women and children, she was sud- 
denly and stealthily set upon by a submarine, 
sunk in an hour, and on the bottom of the sea 
where so many secrets lie, there lie some things 
that are not secrets ! There are the bones of your 
fellow-citizens, men, women and children, who 
lie there, eloquent forever against a nation which, 
in order to carry out an unrighteous cause, recks 
not of the lives of the innocent, but is willing to 
slay and to slaughter in order that it may emerge' 
in bloody triumph to an unholy end. 

Not very long ago I heard Consul Frost, who 
was our consul, as you may remember, at Queens- 

[107] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

town, describe his duties when the Lusitania 
sank. The word came to his office that the 
great ship had gone to the bottom and that the 
work of rescue was on. He went down to the 
shore and spent days and nights there, caring for 
such persons as could be rescued, and he formed 
a corps to watch by the seaside and gather up 
the bodies of those who were washed ashore. 
For some four or five days they were kept busy 
and each wave that came up brought its toll with 
it, until, finally, there were no morgues, nor hos- 
pitals, left in which to put the bodies. And as 
the Atlantic, which ordinarily carried the peace- 
ful commerce of our country with England kept 
rolling in, those days and those nights, carrying 
the bodies of American and English and French 
dead, all they could do was to take them out 
and pile them like cord-wood on the dock, until 
there was a pile of human cord-wood some hun- 
dred feet long and nine or ten layers high to show 
the savagery of that slaying. And yet, what did we 
say about it? All we said was: "It is not possible 
that anybody wanted to do that. There must have 
been some mistake. It must have been some mis- 
understood order. It is not human." We said to 
the German Government: "We protest against 
the sinking of the Lusitania. We call your at- 
tention to the provisions of international law 
which prescribe that no merchant ship, no un- 
armed ship, can be sunk, no matter whom she be- 
longs to, without giving her crew and her pas- 

[108] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

sengers time and opportunity to escape to a safe 
place." And the German Government sent us 
word, "Yes; we recognize that principle," and in 
solemn phrase Von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Ger- 
man Chancellor, under the direction, doubtless, 
of his imperial master, gave Germany's pledge 
that it would not repeat that deed, that unarmed 
ships would not be sunk, unless they either resisted 
or tried to get away, until the ordinary visitation, 
search and opportunity of escape to the crew 
and the passengers had been afforded. That 
seemed a great victory for us. People every- 
where said that the President of the United 
States had won a diplomatic victory and had 
rescued for civilization a great domain in inter- 
national law. Yet how delusive and how de- 
ceitful our fancied security was. Six weeks 
after we got the solemn promise of the German 
Government on that subject another ship was 
sunk, and some nine or ten Americans were sunk 
with it. And then one ship and another was 
sunk. When the first one went down the Ger- 
man Government sent us word: "Yes; we dis- 
avow that act, and we will rebuke the commander 
of the U-boat who did it" ; and yet every now and 
then another went down. You remember the 
Sussex, the Channel ship, that was sunk in the 
same way. We protested, and they promised. 

And then, finally, in February, 191 7, this per- 
fectly incredible thing happened: The German 
Government sent us word that from then on it 

[109] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

intended to wage ruthless warfare by U-boats; 
that it had marked out on the space of the great 
deep certain areas in which it would not permit 
any ship to go; that there were certain lanes of 
the seas into which we could send our ships and 
they would not attack them, and that we might 
send one ship a week to England if it followed a 
prescribed course and was painted like a barber's 
pole. And the German Chancellor, Von Beth- 
mann-Hollweg, made this statement in the 
Reichstag: That he had resisted the establish- 
ment of ruthless warfare because he did not be- 
lieve Germany was ready for it, but that he now 
believed Germany was ready for it, and, there- 
fore, he was in favor of it. In other words, a 
solemn promise — not a promise to give anything ; 
not a promise that appealed to our greed or our 
pride, but a promise made in the interest of hu- 
manity and of human life, and of the protection 
of the innocent, and of the observance of law — 
that promise was given to us, not because it was 
intended to be kept, but merely in order that the 
men who intended to slaughter might have time 
to manufacture and sharpen more instruments of 
execution. There was only one thing to do — or 
two, perhaps : We could yield,^ or we could fight ! 
And in all likelihood yielding would simply post- 
pone the fight. Can anybody imagine what 
would have happened in this world if Germany, 
the German Government, had been able to beat 
the Allies and had at its command the armies of 

[110] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

Europe and the fleet of England? Just place 
yourself, now, in the position of the Kaiser. It 
is an unpleasant invitation. I think he must 
have dreams at night. 

I do not love war. I look forward to the day 
when war will be a reminiscence of an evil day 
and of a half-progressed civilization. Surely 
this earth that yields so bountifully its riches was 
meant for the children of men to enjoy, as an 
opportunity of improvement to us, and not a 
place of a mutual slaughter. I do not enjoy the 
idea of war, and yet there are some things dearer 
than life. Our fathers fought from 1776 to 1783 
to establish freedom. Would we call back the 
Continental Army? Would we send Lafayette 
back to France — and Rochambeau? Would we 
take Washington's sword out of his hand and 
break it over our knee, and say : "Don't do that. 
We would rather live forever slaves to a tyran- 
nous government than have a fight about it?" 
Would we call back any of the true wars that 
have been fought for principle and for the estab- 
lishment of right in this world? No! And to- 
night, when we are in this war, there isn't a man 
in America who has inherited any of the spirit of 
the founders of this government, or caught any of 
the inspiration of liberty and freedom; there isn't 
a man who loves his children and wants them to 
have a chance, who does not believe that this 
war must be fought to a finish; by that I do 
not mean fought to an end, but fought to a finish, 

[111] 



FRONTliERS OF FREEDOM 

and that finish must be an absolute victory over 
any power existing in the world that can visit 
another such catastrophe upon the human race. 
God didn't make many cowards when he made 
America. I don't know where to find any. I 
have gone from one end of this country to an- 
other. I have visited the boys in the camps. I 
have seen their mothers visiting them, and I have 
seen those heroic and spartan American mothers 
looking with pride and love and affection upon 
their uniformed soldier boys, turning aside 
now and then to wipe away a tear, but 
never saying "Turn back." I have seen our 
manufacturers changed from one occupation to 
another in order that the great material resources 
of this country might be mobilized to sus- 
tain our boys at the front. I have seen our 
government at Washington cooperating with 
the representatives of Labor and of Capital, 
both of them filled with patriotism, in order that 
the sweetness of our national life might be pre- 
served and the full mobilization of all of its 
forces brought about. I have seen consideration 
given to the lives of women and children in work- 
shops and factories, the hours of labor of men in 
certain occupations shortened — ^all to the end 
that we might build up a strong and virile people 
here at home while this war is going on to 
strengthen our boys at the front. And it is 
highly important that that should be, for, while 
our boys are making the world abroad safe for 

[1121 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

democracy, we must make at home democracy 
safe for the world. 

They are forming everywhere, a milHon 
strong! They are going across the sea to fight 
your fight and my fight. They are not going 
over to conquer anybody else's country. They 
are not going over to impose an indemnity on 
anybody. They are not going over to slaughter 
women and children. They are not going over 
to bring back a long list of captives to put into our 
workshops and factories. They are going over 
to rewrite the Declaration of Independence! 
They are going over to carry into effect the mes- 
sage of freedom which America has already dis- 
seminated throughout the world ! And they ask us, 
you and me, to do our share as they do their 
share. They do not,, all of them, perhaps, un- 
derstand the intricacies of this philosophical con- 
flict. They may not know the details of the 
atrocities which the German Government has 
performed or the fearful injuries it has inflicted 
upon civilization. They may not know what 
Thomas Jefferson said about Democracy, or what 
Nietzsche said about Power, but they were born 
in this country, or have acquired citizenship here, 
and they have caught the subtle effluvium of 
patriotism and of freedom. They are going over 
to enter the mouth of hell ! They are going over 
to go through the gates of death ! They are go- 
ing over where the very worst that science can do 
for human destruction has been perfected. Long, 

[113] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

sleepless, watchful nights in the trenches are ahead 
of them — death ahead of some of them. They are 
going over to give all they have in order that you 
and I and those who come after us and men 
everywhere may live in a land of opportunity and 
under a reign of justice! Oh, my fellow citizens, 
suppose a soldier came in here and said to you: 
''Good people, I have been selected to go off and 
hazard my life for you. I would like to have a 
coat, and shoes, and a hat, and a gun ; I would like 
to have a gas mask; I would like to have equip- 
ment to make my task as safe as possible." Every 
one in this audience would empty his pockets and 
pour all that he had into the hat in order that the 
soldier might have everything that he needed for 
his comfort and safety. Women would take their 
jewels and the men their money to decorate him 
as a hero. 

Instead of coming, he is training at Chillicothe 
and Montgomery and at all the camps in this coun- 
try. He is marching by the moonlight and get- 
ting ready to fight your fight — and I am coming 
in his place. Just for a moment I represent him 
as an advocate to you. I am coming to ask you 
to clothe him and feed him, to pay his railroad 
fare, to carry him across the ocean, and to put a 
gun in his hand. I am asking you to give him a 
chance to live, to come back to us with victory 
in his hand — victory for justice and right in the 
world. And he will do it ! When this campaign 
is over I want the German Emperor to have a 

[114] 



THE CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 

message from the people of the United States, 
not written in a bank, nor written in some special 
select room here and there, but written by the 
lamp light in the humble homes of the people of 
the United States, and I want that word to 
read: *'Sir Emperor, we have sent over to you, 
by special messenger, this message: that 
the American people are marching a million 
strong to join your adversaries and to put 
an end to your unjust warfare. They have come 
at our bidding to rescue the human race from 
your aggression, and we are back of them with 
our hands, with our hearts, with our money. We 
are piling up mountains of dollars in order that 
they may use them to get at you and your 
army until you finally yield the palm to justice 
and are willing to live in this world, as everybody 
else ought to live : with a just and due regard to 
the rights of others and without a willingness to 
sacrifice the innocent to an unholy ambition." 



[115] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

We have joined hands with free men everywhere, that 
we may turn over a new page in the hook of history. 
They will find written with the finger of America the 
message that unrighteousness shall not prevail. 

Tent Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio, 
October 17, 191 7. 

THIS is a strange scene. For a good many 
years we have met on peaceful missions, 
seeking in one way or another to secure here an 
ideal city, and we have discussed in a calm and un- 
troubled atmosphere our domestic problems, with- 
out the thought ever crossing our minds that the 
time might come when this great nation would 
be involved in war and the populations of 
our great cities would be assembled to hear dis- 
cussions of military preparations. Outside of 
our own war — our Civil War — and the Spanish 
War, which, while a brilliant exploit of arms in 
a worthy cause, was relatively a small endeavor, 
the very genius of our people seems to dedicate 
our history to peace. And I suppose that if an 
inquiry had been made of the people of the United 
States prior to 19 14 as to the possibility of a 
world war, the judgment would have been sub- 

[116] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

stantially unanimous that, in the progress of civ- 
ilization, the possibility of world-wide war had 
been obliterated. 

In the space of three years, we have been 
obliged to reform all our notions on that subject. 
We have not only seen the great civilized powers 
of Europe at war with one another, on a scale 
wholly unprecedented, but we find our own coun- 
try now drawn into that war, and in some sense 
one of the principal and most important factors in 
it. Every now and then I hear people say that even 
to-day we Americans do not realize that America 
is at war; and every now and then, though not 
often, I hear somebody say, "This isn't a popular 
war." I try to analyze what they mean by that, 
and my mind goes back to other places and other 
times. I can see nations assembling their armies 
amid the plaudits of the crowds ; I can see women 
cheering marching armies and armed nations in 
frenzy of madness and military spirit. And then I 
look from that to our people and I say, "No, in 
that sense, this is not a popular war." God forbid 
that any war should ever be popular in the United 
States in that sense. A disordered national 
imagination, an unrighteous national ambition, a 
lust for conquest, a craze for blood, a willingness 
to take by force from other people who would be ^ 
content if left in peace with justice — that spirit 
has sometimes made what is called a popular 
war. The present war, it was declared, was very 
popular in Germany. I think it is less popular 

[117] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

now and growing still less popular. We remem- 
ber the stories when the German Army was mob- 
ilized — how in every city flags decorated each 
house and how women leaned out of windows 
to throw flowers to the departing German troops 
and told their heroes to return with the "Mittel 
Europa" ideal realized. We have no such scenes 
as that, but as befits a great, civilized and free 
people, this war has the majesty of a great idea; 
it has the dignity of a high ideal; it marks the 
determination of a free people to reestablish jus- 
tice on an earth which for three years has wept 
in ashes and in blood. 

We must realize that we are at war ; we must 
realize that the very character of our adversary 
and the aggression which brought on our own 
participation marks it as a supreme struggle. 
Let no man imagine for a moment that 
a feeble effort will suffice. If we are in 
truth to rescue civilization out of this conflagra- 
tion, then every nerve and every muscle, every 
thought, every affection, every impulse, every 
capacity both in us as individuals and collectively 
in us as a nation, must be devoted to this under- 
taking, not only that we may win, but that we 
may win quickly. For every day that this war 
continues decreases the wealth of the world by 
at least $100,000,000 and many thousand lives. 
So far these have been not your lives, nor mine, 
nor those of our sons or brothers, but the lives of 
fellow human beings, much like us, who are en- 

[118] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

titled to peace and liberty and opportunity in the 
world and whose welfare is an essential ingredi- 
ent, in any wide and popular view, of our own 
welfare. So, if America can shorten this war by 
a single day, it is worth the effort that it costs. 

Now this task, in order that you may have 
some notion of its magnitude, I shall describe 
only by casual reference. When the war broke 
out the United States had a Regular Army not 
much larger than the municipal police force of 
the city of London. It had a trained body of 
officers. West Point, certainly the finest mili- 
tary school in the world, had been turning out a 
small contingent of officers and some additions 
had been made from time to time from civil life. 
And so we had officers enough for that small 
army. But when we realized the character of 
this war, there was a general feeling on the 
part of the people that, in assembling quickly 
enough the huge military establishment neces- 
sary, there would be a great shortage of 
officers; and it was doubted whether this mili- 
tary establishment of ours could show the ex- 
pansion necessary successfully to produce offi- 
cers and trained men. Now what was the first 
thing done? Training camps were opened for 
officers. More than 100,000 young men in this 
country applied for admission to those training 
camps. In the space of about two months there 
was assembled and trained as fine a group of 
young men as ever donned uniforms on the face 

[119] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

of tlxis planet. I give you, not my own estimate, 
but the estimate of the grizzled veterans of the 
Regular Army — the men who have spent 
forty and fifty years in the Regular Army. 
They tell me with one accord that this body of 
young men who came from our training camps 
is as fine officer material as any army in the 
world has ever had. I want to pay this tribute 
to the American college. The young men who 
are in those camps were for the most part from 
our colleges; in no large part young men of 
wealth; in no large part professional men; but 
sons of artisans and of workers just as much as 
sons of professional men. They were a 
cross-section of American life. But when they 
put on the uniform and devoted themselves to 
training, the essence of the athletic spirit — that 
American desire or demand for fair play — and 
the results of the universal education which we 
have spread over America demonstrated their 
value to us as a nation. We summoned them out of 
the workshops and the cornfield and the office and 
almost overnight fashioned them into officers. 
Then we began to assemble the army. The 
Regular Army was doubled in size by volun- 
teers. The National Guard was filled, in some 
places quite to war strength, by volunteering. 
Our own State of Ohio increased its contribu- 
tion of National Guard troops until it stood a 
full division, so that it ranks third in the United 

1120] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

States, only three having a full division of the 
National Guard. 

And then the so-called Selective Service Law 
was passed, and those who little understood the 
nature of America, those who were victimized by 
the fear or belief that democracies are necessar- 
ily feeble in their institutions and that the inter- 
ests of the citizens in a democracy are necessarily 
selfish and individual as contrasted with commu- 
nal and public — people of that type of mind were 
fearful when we asked the country to select an 
army that the country would not receive well 
this sort of invitation. Yet in the few months 
that have elapsed, ten million young Americans 
from 21 to 31 have been enrolled by our own 
registration boards, by the use of civilians se- 
lected out of our own communities. Boards of 
exemption and review have selected and sent 
into the camps or cantonments 687,000 choice 
young men from the body of the country. I 
want you to realize and take pride in that spec- 
tacle ! Men used to go through the public streets 
waving banners with legends on them that ex- 
cited momentary passions, and, with the stirring 
music of the fife and drum, young men fell in. 
But here, as befits a democracy, the grave and 
serious duty of defending the national interest 
was apportioned by the selective process, with- 
out the beating of a drum and without a murmur 
of opposition. 

Now I tell you what the result is: — In those 
[121] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

camps, not the volunteer camps, each man is 
asked: "What do you want to do?" I have 
had reports from five or six of the largest camps 
and they show that the majority answered in 
effect "I don't care what I do just so I get to 
France among the first!" The next question 
asked them is: "What branch of the service 
do you prefer?" Now one who didn't know 
America would expect them to say: "Well, I 
have been working in a store;" "I have been a 
hand on a farm;" "I have been a mechanic;" 
"I have been a clerk;" "I don't know much about 
guns and cannon; perhaps the Quartermaster 
Corps or the Ordnance Department or some one 
of the non-combatant places is the place where 
I can render the best service." But what is the 
fact? Of these sons and brothers, drawn out 
of life by selection — more than one-third asked 
to go into the infantry service. The next choice 
is the light artillery ; the next is the heavy artil- 
lery service ; the next is the aviation service. So 
that what they asked for in a tremendously pre- 
dominating majority of instances is, not the non- 
combatant service for which their previous ex- 
perience might qualify them, but the fighting 
branches, so that they can take the risk of fight- 
ing for their country with the real weapons of 
war! Our nation need have nothing but mount- 
ing pride at the spectacle they present. 

For this army, amounting to more than a mil- 
lion men, much preparation had to be made. We 

[122] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

had had a situation which might roughly be de- 
scribed as this: — The Chief of Ordnance or the 
Quartermaster General went to buy supplies; he 
took his basket and went to the nearest market 
place and if he did not get what he wanted in one 
market he went to another. But when we went 
into this . war, it was realized that there was 
not in the country enough of many of the most 
necessary supplies, and the task began of or- 
ganizing the business industry of this whole na- 
tion to do the things necessary to sustain and 
carry forward this army. 

It has required business to be done on a very 
large scale. I made a speech two months ago 
in which I was trying to tell the people of New 
York the size of the operations of the War 
Department, and I mentioned that before the 
year was over we would have bought 5,000,000 
blankets. That was two months ago. We have 
already bought 11,000,000 blankets. The War 
Department appropriation used to be two hun- 
dred million or three hundred million dollars,, 
and under exceptional circumstances it sometimes 
ran up to four hundred millions. Several 
branches of the War Department now have each 
three hundred millions to spend; and this is only 
the beginning. 

America occupies this position: — ^We must 
not only supply our own army, but we must 
continue to furnish large supplies to those 
who are allied with us in this undertaking; 

[123] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

and in addition to that, the normal process 
of our life as a nation must go forward 
in order that we may be strong now and strong 
in the reconstructing process that will be neces- 
sary after this war. Therefore, our effort in 
Washington has been so to expand industry as 
to meet our need and so to conserve the health of 
our people by preventing where we could and dis- 
couraging where we could excessive hours of la- 
bor as to build a great army and equip it and turn 
the industries of our country over to our allies in 
accordance with their needs. At the same time we 
have tried to keep building up a strong and vigor- 
ous people, in order that our army might be prop- 
erly sustained and that America, when the war is 
over, shall represent a great reservoir of human 
strength and high morality to put a fresh stamp 
on the face of the world. 

All of these things require money. They require 
money in a very large amount. I remember only a 
few years ago when we talked about a million dol- 
lar contract as though there were something scan- 
dalous about the work ; and now the expenditures 
of our Government will probably be twenty bil- 
lion dollars. It means that we must contribute 
money. It doesn't mean a few people, but it 
means that everybody must contribute. I want to 
ask you to remember this : — In twenty thousand 
homes in Cleveland, there are mothers, fathers, 
sisters, wives, who have somebody at the fronts 
Some of you may have soldier boys in training. 

[124] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

But whether you personally have or not, your 
fellow citizen has! The little boys that played 
about your doorstep, it seems only yesterday, are 
now in uniform at Chillicothe or Montgomery, 
or on the high seas, or have gone across the high 
seas, to meet a military adversary the worst, in a 
military sense, the world has ever seen. Their 
safety will depend upon their having clothes, and 
food, and protective devices. Can you conceive of 
sleeping at night if you felt that Johnny who 
played on your doorstep lacked any one of those 
things because you hadn't done your duty? 

1 suppose some day the Adjutant General's 
office will have a list of people from France, our 
people, who have given up their lives for this 
cause. It may be that telegrams will come to 
Cleveland telling of losses among our people; 
and our imaginations will fly to the fields of 
France and we will see upturned faces of boys 
whom we knew, who have given all for their 
country — boys it may be who can't even be 
brought home to rest with their fathers. When 
the list comes, when our imagination thus dwells 
upon their heroic sacrifice and upon the splen- 
dor of that contribution to the rescue of the, 
world, don't let any of us have the shrinking and 
shirking feeling that if we had done more in the^ 
matter of supplying them with protecting devices 
the story might have been otherwise! This 
is very real to me. These hundreds of thousands 
of Americans in a certain sense rest on my 

[125] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

shoulders by the accidents of official position. 
I come to you, my fellow citizens of Cleveland, to 
ask you to help bear that burden. 

I suppose that the world would not continue 
to exist if there were not some doubting Thom- 
ases — if there were not some misguided people 
who criticized some particular fault or another 
— drumstick orators about broomstick prepara- 
tion and that sort of thing. But let us pass that 
over. You can rest in the assurance that 
America has shown herself worthy in her prepa- 
ration and our boys are not going to want in 
the supply of arms and ammunition and pro- 
tective devices against the artifices of our ad- 
versary. They are flowing out in adequate quan- 
tity from our workshops. And in addition to that, 
— and I like more to tell you this than anything 
else, — there is going to be a better fighting army 
than we have ever had, a better army than we 
have ever had in this respect, that from the first 
day that a soldier was called, it was determined 
that the environment in which he was trained 
should be a stimulating and wholesome environ- 
ment. There are things that soldiers can bring 
home that are worse than wounds. It was deter- 
mined that so far as these training camps in this 
country were concerned they should be wholesome 
and stimulating and that the young men trained 
in them should have opportunity to progress and 
learn. So our camps are filled with boys play- 
ing football and baseball and tennis. At the 

[126] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

last camp I visited I looked under the beds 
where the boys keep their libraries and I found 
one boy with a plane and solid geometry, 
one with Cesar's Commentaries and others with 
books of poetry and romance. We are sending 
into this contest Americans of culture and high 
ideals — ^worthy of the cause they are going to 
defend. And when they come out of it, they 
will be stimulated and strengthened so far as 
their minds and bodies are concerned — ^heroes in 
the highest sense of the word — having contrib- 
uted their services to a great ethical cause. 

Now let me deal just a minute with the cause. 
Every man in this country hoped that this might 
not happen. When this war broke out in Eu- 
rope, we stood back horrified and aghast. We 
knew among our neighbors and friends mem- 
bers of each of these nationalities and peoples. 
We know them now! It seemed inconceivable 
that aggregated as a nation they should much 
differ from the individuals we knew. And when 
philosophers tried to tell us a new spirit had 
come over the government of the German peo- 
ple, many of us thought of Schiller and Goethe 
and of the splendid progress of these people in 
art and civilization, and it was difficult to imagine 
that theirs was a government which had foregone 
and forgotten the moralities which ordinarily ex- 
ist among civilized people. Yet we saw things 
that brook no other explanation. When Belgium 
was invaded as a military necessity, there seemed 

[127] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

to be a sort of callous disregard for wrongdoing 
that certainly excited many of us. And then 
when the stealthy warfare of the U-boat began! 
— At first against their armed adversary, that 
seemed horrible enough. It seemed to lack the 
boldness which ordinarily characterizes war. 
Then we saw the U-boat war extended to the 
unarmed ship and we found in international law 
that a merchant ship, even of an enemy, may not 
be attacked without warning until the casual 
persons, the passengers, are carried in safety 
from the perils of the sea. And yet in spite of 
that, we saw a ship like the Lusitania, filled with 
non-combatant people, men, women, children, 
some of them English, some Americans, who, at 
the very moment, were friendly people to the Ger- 
man Government — we saw that great ship sent 
down. And we tried to get away from the horror 
of that spectacle! I am sure you felt as I did — 
for months after the Lusitania was sunk, as I 
closed my eyes at night, I could imagine the waves, 
each of those lines of foam no longer mere foam, 
but the white shroud of some American woman 
or child ruthlessly done to death! But Ger- 
many had given up all charity and all thought 
of consequences and was rushing forth with the 
feet of war bent on conquest and destruction. 
Our Government protested and the German 
government said: "No! We don't intend 
keeping on doing this," and made a solemn 
engagement that passengers would be given 

[128] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

an opportunity to make a safe escape. Within 
six weeks after that assurance, another ship 
was sunk under somewhat similar circum- 
stances; and the German government sent us 
word they disavowed that action and would pun- 
ish the captain of the U-boat. They teased us 
and solaced us for our dead with promises which 
they later confessed were only made to keep us 
quiet until they had built all the submarines they 
needed. I do not blame the German people al- 
though it seems to me a great tragedy that a part 
of the German people approved it after it was 
done. But I blame their mad leaders who seemed 
to have drunk of human blood until they were 
insane. I blame German autocracy which sets 
the law of the Hohenzollern dynasty above the 
law of God on this earth and is willing to have 
its own people immoral and the neutral nations 
of the world subjected to ruthless slaughter in 
order that it may magnify the pretenses of its 
emperor king ! 

And then came the notice that the German 
government had built enough submarines to feel 
safe and would march on the open highway of the 
commerce of mankind and mark out lanes through 
which we might send a ship or two provided we 
painted them like barber poles! We could not 
be assured that even these ships would be safe. 
We were told that the Master of the Universe 
and the Partner of God had decreed that cer- 
tain parts of the ocean could not be traversed by 

[129] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

ships and that if we undertook to continue our 
commerce the ships would be sunk without warn- 
ing. We had two courses. We could send the 
ambassador home and rest with a protest. We 
could have shrunk and shriveled and said: "So 
long as you don't pinch us, you can eat every- 
body else." We could have given up our rights 
to be a nation. We could have knelt at the 
foot of the Hohenzollern throne and said : "Thy 
will, O Lord, is enough for us." We didn't do it! 
We had no intention of doing it! Not because 
it made so very much difference, perhaps, whether 
we saved a ship, but because, by this time, it had 
become clear that this war was not an ordinary 
war but a conflict of philosophies; because we 
had to admit autocracy as the only form of 
government on this earth or else we had to dem- 
onstrate that democracy was its master. 

I hope my imagination is not too lively; but I 
like to think of Jefferson and Washington and 
the men who founded this country as looking 
down upon the world and thinking that off in a 
forest they planted a democracy for the better- 
ment of mankind. I like to think of their follow- 
ing the results of its example, until even China 
shakes itself out of an empire thousands of years 
old, and Russia shakes off autocracy, and then 
saying: "These things are really the fruits of 
our spirit; they are all our children." And if 
they do see and have followed the course of 
human events, they must realize that this war 

[130] 



THE CALL TO FREE MEN 

is a war for freedom, and, unless we saw our 
way out, our turn would be next. From the in- 
vasion of Belgium it was evident that there was 
a recrudescence of the spirit that led Augustus 
Caesar in ancient Rome to try to conquer the 
world. And now those in America under the 
Stars and Stripes who learned to lisp almost 
with their first words the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence have really joined hands with free men 
everywhere so that, presenting a solid front, we 
might turn over a new page in the book of history, 
put there the authority and the sign-manual of 
democracy on the earth, and by this cooperation 
of effort strike down forever the false philos- 
ophy that subjects the will to dynastic pretenses, 
and establish on the earth once and for all those 
lanes of justice and of freedom without which 
further human progress is impossible. 

I have finished. I came not so much to tell 
why the war is being fought nor its nature, but 
I came to tell you that this is your war and mine ; 
and that those of us who are too old to fight, who 
can't shoulder a gun and live in a trench or wear 
a gas-mask, those of us who have not been 
chosen for such service can still fight our part in 
this war; and it takes only a stroke of the pen on 
the application for a bond. We must build here 
at home dreadnoughts of money and 42-centi- 
meters of finance, and the message they will 
carry will be one of encouragement to our own 
soldiers. To those, on the other hand, who have 

[1311 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

brought destruction on the earth; to those who 
have caused the awful holocaust and loss of blood 
and treasure; to those at Potsdam who now, in 
the providence of God, are beginning to tremble, 
to them the message of this accumulation of 
treasure by you will be the voice of doom ! They 
will find written on the wall, with the finger of 
America, the message which means that un- 
righteousness shall not prevail. 



[132] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

The forty years of preparation which the German gov- 
ernment went through were forty years of deadening the 
minds of the German people so that they would not 
realize the possibility of liberty in the world, so that they 
would follow without asking questions, so that they 
would substitute the welfare of the Hohenzollern Dy- 
nasty for any considerations of humanity. 

Boston City Club, October 25, 191 7. 

IF a man who is called upon to decide something 
can only see the man to whom he is talk- 
ing, he is quite likely to go wrong. But if a 
man has just imagination enough to shut his 
eyes and see over the head of the man he is talk- 
ing to and see the persons who, though unrepre- 
sented, are still interested, he is not likely to 
make a mistake, either from lack of courage or 
for any personal consideration. Hence when a 
man gets into a public place, like the head of a 
department in Washington, it is an important 
thing to remember that the particular persons 
who happen to be grouped in the relatively small 
office in which he is situated are only an in- 
finitesimal fraction of all the people who dwell 
between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and 
that the real answer to the question always is, — 

[133] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

and sometimes it is rather painful and difficult, — 
not, how it will affect the particular individual 
who is there, but how it is going to affect this 
great lot of people who, so far as that question 
is concerned, are just as important as the person 
to whom he is talking. 

Of course this situation is one in which not 
only public officers in Washington, but men all 
over this great country of ours, men of all walks 
of life, and of all intricacies of interest in busi- 
ness and industry, have, so far as they them- 
selves are concerned, ceased to exist as persons. 
There has been a great amalgamation of the 
individual personalities of the people of the 
United States into a composite national unit 
type. I think it will be said of all the people 
who are actively engaged in this war that per- 
sonal interest and self-interest have all been for- 
gotten, party distinction has been unremem- 
bered, the old habit of getting and gaining in 
life has been foregone, and there is a sponta- 
neous and inspiring unanimity of opinion among 
the people of the United States, whether in pub- 
lic office or out of it, that nothing else matters 
until this war is won. 

I am glad to be here because I think it is highly 
important that there should be an interchange of 
opinion among the people of the United States 
about the great business upon which our nation is 
engaged. This war differs from every other war 
in history, both in its size, in its intensity, in its 

[134] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

characteristics, and in the implements with which 
it is being fought. The number of men now en- 
gaged on the battlefields of Europe is perhaps 
greater at this moment than the aggregate of all 
the people who have been on European battle- 
fields in one hundred years before this war be- 
gan. And not only is that true, but the peoples 
who are represented are more affected by the 
war than any peoples have ever been by any war 
which has taken place since men ceased to slay 
all of their adversaries, including men, women, 
and children. 

There was, if one may so characterize it, orig- 
inally a period of barbaric warfare, in which 
the extermination, root and branch, of the ad-' 
versary was the aim of a combatant, and after 
a victory had been won in that age it was cus- 
tomary to gather all of the conquered men and the 
women and children together, and enslave or kill 
them, so that the extermination of the adversary 
would be thoroughgoing. Then, as men began 
to be civilized and began to have not only some 
compunctions of humanity, but some realization 
of the economic interdependence of men upon one 
another, that mode of warfare was succeeded by 
what may be called the era of civilized warfare, 
in which year after year, and war after war, 
new restraints were put upon the combatants in 
the interest of the non-combatant population. 
We began to draw up and set down in books, 
and recognize and act upon, certain rules of so- 

[135] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

called civilized warfare. Among those rules 
were some that have become axiomatic, so that 
everybody who hears them accepts them at once. 
For instance, that a non-combatant civilian popu- 
lation, not occupying a fortified place, and not 
participating in military activity, is immune 
from attack. Another, appertaining to the sea, 
has been for many, many years well recognized 
and lived up to by all civilized nations, that mer- 
chant ships, even of an adversary nation, are 
not subject to be attacked until after they have 
been halted and searched and their non-combat- 
ant passengers given an opportunity to secure a 
safe retreat. Many rules of that kind have 
grown up in the era of civilized warfare, with 
this result that the rigors of war, outside of 
the actual losses at the battle front and the in- 
evitable griefs at home caused by them during 
this long period, have been visited almost ex- 
clusively upon the combatants. 

Now we have suddenly drawn a line and closed 
the age of civilized warfare, and have gone into 
a new era of barbarous warfare, in which 
one belligerent has so far cast aside all 
of these rules and restrictions of civilized war- 
fare that it has not hesitated to kill, to mutilate, 
to maim, and to outrage women and children ; to 
bombard defenseless and undefended towns; to 
drop bombs from the sky upon civilian popula- 
tions ; and to organize a mode of warfare by sea 
which, if it were individual in its execution, would 

[136] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

be called a process of assassination, and which 
consists in an unseen implement, under the sur- 
face of the sea, not taking the hazards of war; 
not willing to play the game, not giving the other 
fellow a chance; skulking away from any ship 
which may have the means of defending itself; 
lurking until it finds an unsuspecting and de- 
fenseless victim; and then by stealth doing it to 
death, without even giving the women on board 
a chance to say their prayers. 

The character of this war has not only be- 
come thus barbarous, but its effects are no lon- 
ger restricted to the combatant population and 
the civilian population who are intimately con- 
nected with those who are thus engaged, but 
we witness now a coordination of the nations for 
war which reaches out to the remotest village 
and hamlet of a country engaged. Take our own 
case. When we are, ourselves, thoughtless about 
it, we think of this war as being fought in France. 
Why, it is being fought in Boston, it is being 
fought in Cleveland! It is being fought in Se- 
attle, and in Waco, Texas. We think of it as 
being fought by these army officers and the men 
in uniform in the other countries. It is being 
fought by you. It is being fought by your wives. 
It is being fought in every factory, in every 
workshop, in every store, in every home, in this 
country, and by those marvelously subtle proc- 
esses of modern scientific achievement whereby 
we are all coordinated, — as Lowell once said, "by 

[137] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

a common nervous system," — until we now have 
an institution where every man's thought, energy, 
and nervous system are electrically connected 
through a center, and all made a part of the ag- 
gregate economic force to win. So that this war 
differs in character, in intensity, and in conse- 
quences from any other. 

I have no doubt many men in this room have 
read the story of Napoleon's invasion of Rus- 
sia. I think no greater book has been written 
in the lifetime of any living man than Tolstoy's 
"War and Peace." It tells the whole story of 
war in Russia, the Napoleonic advance, the Na- 
poleonic retreat, the withdrawal of the civilian 
population in advance of the army; and Tolstoy's 
purpose was to paint it at its worst — not to be 
satisfied with the glory, the waving of flags, and 
the huzzas of victory, but to paint the individual, 
personal side of war — and so he told of families, 
of villages, and of cities, and how they were af- 
fected. Yet when you compare that tragic ex- 
perience with what the world has seen in the 
three years which we now look back upon, it 
seems like the mimicry of children — it seems 
like sham battle — as compared with the awful 
devastation which the human race has suffered 
in that time. 

I need say nothing of Belgium. That is so in- 
timately known to us that we, in our own bodies, 
it seems to me, have suffered with the Belgians. 
There was a poetic quality about the invasion 

[138] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

of Belgium. It seemed as though there was 
something Greek about it. Here were those 
people, letting everybody alone and willing to let 
everybody alone, and asking only that they be 
let alone; building up a little civilization, an at- 
tractive and beautiful partner of the civilization 
of their French neighbor; with a charming and 
cultured people in a small and defenseless coun- 
try; guaranteed as to its integrity by solemn in- 
struments entered into by all of the surrounding 
nations, by which each of them agreed not only 
to prevent everybody else from interfering with 
the integrity of that country, but to refrain them- 
selves from violating it. 

We followed the tragic fate of Belgium. We 
saw its undefended cities leveled to the ground 
and burned, and we saw houses entered by sol- 
diers to drive out the civilian population, who 
were lined up in the streets and shot by hun- 
dreds, in order — so we were told — that the whole 
world might take notice of how terrible the Ger- 
man autocracy was when it really got started. 

We saw later a large part of the Belgian popu- 
lation deported — a thing that had not happened, 
so far as my recollection of history goes, since 
the days of the Roman conquest of the world, 
when the victims were brought in trailing at the 
chariot wheels and the conqueror's glory was 
counted by the number of his captives. Here 
was a civilian population which had done nothing 
yet the people were herded into trains and carried 

[139] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

into Germany, put into workshops and subjected 
to compulsory labor, judged and condemned to 
involuntary servitude, for no crime, but merely in 
furtherance of the central purpose of military 
aggression and dynastic aggrandizement. 

That story is so well known to us that we 
scarcely need to have it called to our minds. But 
all over Europe, in every corner of it, death and 
destruction has laid its heavy hand in a way we 
scarcely realize. Armies have swept over Po- 
land; the shrinking, feeble, and timid women, 
gathering their children about them, have with- 
drawn into the woods and tried to hide from this 
avalanche of armed men, and in the exodus of 
a population, fleeing from things worse than 
death, the little babies have been trampled to 
death before the advance of the army as it 
came to take possession. In Armenia a million 
persons killed — not combatant persons, not men 
who bared their bosoms to the adversary and 
said, "It is an even game; shoot me or I will 
shoot you" ; — but people sacrificed to the fanati- 
cal religious hatred of the Turk by reason of 
the opportunity presented through world-wide 
war, with the worst passions of the Turk stirred 
to emulate the example of his over-lord, the 
Kaiser, by the example which the German autoc- 
racy had set among civilized people. 

When I think of pictures like this I wonder 
how the German Kaiser can sleep at night. How 
fair the world was in 1914? The marching army 

[140] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

of democratic effort and belief was going all 
over the world and adding victories for human- 
ity and mankind to the great territory which it 
had conquered in its original home here. I was 
in Europe just before the war broke out; the air 
was electric with the feeling that a reorganiza- 
tion of the social and domestic relations of men 
was in progress, that the thing which was 
started here in Boston — the spirit of liberty and 
independence and of self-government, and of 
the dignity of the individual, a message which 
had been first sent from here — was really being 
heard over there. Men were getting to be recog- 
nized in the world. In places where ancient aris- 
tocracies had existed and present royalty and 
their ancestors had ruled for years and years, we 
were coming to hear of happy homes, of prosper- 
ous and contented people, who had something ap- 
proaching equality of opportunity, economically 
and industrially, among their own people. In 
the midst of that — just when the spirit of the 
age seemed marching to the redemption of 
mankind — this war was forced upon the world, 
upon the flimsiest and most paltry of excuses, 
because I think nobody can have examined the 
original cause of this war, the ultimatum to 
Serbia and its answer, and the things which 
happened after that, without realizing that the 
head of the German government willed this war. 
And so when I think in this vein, after these 
three years of slaughter, with civilization bear- 

[141] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

ing vital if not deadly wounds in every part of 
its body, with the hope of the human race de- 
ferred centuries from the advancement that it 
might otherwise quickly have attained, I won- 
der how the German Emperor is able to sleep 
at night. 

I recall a picture that must be familiar to many 
of you, entitled, "The Conqueror," and on a 
shadow emblematic of a state of war I see 
riding the majestic figure of a man who while 
living had been a great conqueror. He is 
riding along a highway, with his head bowed 
down; and as you study the impressionistic mist 
which covers the picture, you can see that the 
high road over which he goes is made up of the 
bodies of men who had been slain in order that 
his military ambition might be satisfied. Along 
the dim road through which this solitary figure 
is riding, stand the accusing figures of the victims 
of his wars, each of them only a spirit, only a 
reminiscence, but with one accord each of them 
pointing, as he rides by, to his conqueror. So I 
wonder just how, when all the flattery and adula- 
tion is taken away, and the Kaiser gets into his 
own room and the supernumeraries who bend the 
knee are away from him, and he is by himself and 
realizes that the head and front of his nation has 
let loose this war on mankind in the world — I 
wonder how he is able to sleep at night. 

Now this war has been brought about. It in- 
volves all of this vast coordination and aggrega- 

[142] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

tion of our national strength. It calls on each 
of us to do our utmost in order that it may be 
successfully and speedily brought to an end. I 
am mightily interested in bringing this war to 
an end. But I have no reference whatever 
merely to having it stop. 

This war went on for two or three years with 
these barbarous attributes which I have de- 
scribed to you, with the frankly professed philos- 
ophy on the part of the German government 
that it was going to make itself so terrible that 
nobody would dare to resist it. We were sepa- 
rated from the scene of the conflict by about 
three thousand miles of ocean. First there was 
the Lusitania, the master horror of this war — 
except one. The great tragedy of this war is 
not the Lusitania, but it is the fact that the sink- 
ing of the Lusitania was approved by the Ger- 
man nation. That is the most tragic fact in 
modern history. 

But we had the Lusitania, and then our gov- 
ernment protested against it, and the German 
government sent out solemn diplomatic assur- 
ances that that would not be repeated. Those 
assurances had scarcely reached us before other 
ships of the same general kind were sunk in 
much the same way. And each time the German 
government disavowed the act — sent us word 
that they had not intended to commit it — that it 
was unauthorized ; and in one instance they said 
that they had rebuked the commander who had 

[143] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

made the mistake; giving us all the time, first, 
the definite and positive assurance that there- 
after warfare on the seas would be conducted in 
accordance with the rules of civilized warfare, 
and when these constant exceptions were made, 
reassuring us that they adhered to their original 
declaration. Finally they notified us, in Feb- 
ruary, that they had made up their minds to 
disregard these solemn assurances and promises 
to us, to make another historical scrap of paper 
out of a written engagement, to declare ruthless 
submarine warfare on belligerent and neutral 
alike, to go about the seas worse than ever the 
Barbary pirates bent on the indiscriminate 
slaughter of men, women and children, friend and 
foe alike. They told us in plain terms that they 
had drawn out on the map of the waters of the 
deep certain narrow lanes in which we American 
citizens might sail a limited number of ships — and 
so far as England is concerned, my recollection 
is it was two a week that we could send to Eng- 
land — if we sent them in that lane on particular 
days, and painted according to their directions. 

Of course just this alternative presented it- 
self to us. We could either yield — we could 
either say that we had grown so fat and 
lazy and money-loving that v/e had forgotten 
liberty; or else we could say, "No, all the pros- 
perity, all the success, all the civilization, all the 
ethical advance of our people, is due to one thing, 
and that is that we have been free, and we in- 

riH] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

tend to remain free." And that is what we have 
said. Now we are dedicated with all of our 
efforts of every kind, with our lives, our for- 
tunes, to win this war. Why? Because at last 
we have realized that the forty years of prepa- 
ration for it in Germany were not forty years 
of military preparation. It does not take forty 
years to prepare anybody to do anything in a 
military sense. And all the things that the Ger- 
mans had twenty years ago — guns and ammuni- 
tion, and all of that — are obsolete and worn out; 
so that their forty years of preparation were not 
for the accumulation of military stores, but we 
realize that the forty years of preparation which 
the German government went through were forty 
years of deadening the minds of the German 
people, so that they would not realize the possi- 
bility of liberty in the world, so that they would 
follow without asking questions, so that they 
would substitute the welfare of the Hohenzol- 
lern dynasty for any considerations of humanity 
that might be addressed to their attention. Now 
we realize that our adversary, with this spectac- 
ular illustration in his own people of the way it 
blights the human intellect and dwarfs the human 
conscience, represents the principle of autocracy. 
Fate has taken us like children by the hand 
and led us up to a place where roads divide, and 
told us to choose. On the one side there is au- 
tocracy, a certain kind of mechanical efficiency, 
a certain absence of spiritual quality, a com- 

[145] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

pletely selfish and ambitious attitude by a fa- 
vored class. On the other side there is de- 
mocracy, with its struggle and its chaos, but its 
boundless horizon of opportunity for the indi- 
vidual. We are asked to choose. That choice 
is not hard for us to make. And now that we 
have made it we are entitled to be cheered by 
knowing that we are acting worthily upon our 
choice. The inventive genius of America, a 
thing which hitherto has been devoted to the im- 
provement of manufacturing processes, has now 
been diverted to a new and great scientific enter- 
prise and contest. For a few short weeks — an 
incredibly short number of days — chosen sci- 
entists and inventors have been sitting in a room 
in Washington, and each of them has given up all 
of his own secrets and his trade formulas and his 
competitive advantages, and they have pooled is- 
sues, until they have made the Liberty engine for 
our aircraft, which is perhaps the most striking 
achievement of mechanical ingenuity and perhaps 
the best indication of our success as an industrial 
nation that we have had since this war began. 

In the same way a standardized motor truck 
• — this is a transportation war — one exceedingly 
simple in its construction, with interchangeable 
parts, and easy to operate, so that its usefulness is 
at a maximum, and one easy of production in 
quantities, has been devised. On all hands, in- 
dustrially, inventively, scientifically, mechani- 
cally, from the point of view of the laborer, 

[146] 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 

from the point of view of the captain of indus- 
try, all interests, all capacities, have been laid 
at the feet of the Federal government as the 
representative and the administrator for the 
common good. Our army is already march- 
ing, a part of it overseas, joining hands with he- 
roes who have for three years borne the burden 
and the brunt of this great struggle, presenting 
now to civilized mankind a spectacle of complete 
solidarity among the civilized nations and an ir- 
resistible rampart thrown out to jam back and 
prevent the further encroachment of a medieval 
barbarism upon a modern world. 

Already our soldiers are in France in substan- 
tial numbers. And already we are training them 
here in great numbers. Our preparations are 
made. The material part of our preparation is 
advancing rapidly, and the spiritual part of it 
is even more impressive, for in our effort to pre- 
pare, we have learned some things about de- 
mocracy which we did not know. We knew that 
it was beautiful, but we were not certain that 
it was strong. We knew that it made for lib- 
erty and for freedom, but we were not sure that 
it had the capacity for self-preservation and pro- 
tection against this kind of an adversary. And 
now all of our doubts are gone. We are con- 
solidated as one people. We have one thought. 
We have abated and abandoned all of our sepa- 
ratist tendencies and differences of opinion. We 
are Americans now, joining hands with the he- 

■[147] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

roes of France and England, cheering their 
wearied spirits — if there be a wearied spirit 
among them — with the news that now the great 
civilized powers of the world present an unbroken 
front against this medieval autocratic invader, 
and that the day is in sight when peace will be 
written — permanent peace — based upon those 
standards of justice, equity, and humanity, those 
rights of man which we in our own national 
experiment have demonstrated really to be the 
vital principles of human life. 



T148] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

The private/ uniforms of the United States are not 
being made in sweatshops; for once, at least, the Govern- 
ment of the United States assumes the character of a 
model employer in a vital industry. We shall set oy,r 
faces resolutely against everything which seeks to breUk 
down those barriers set up through years of patient la- 
bor against the enervation and dissipation of the child- 
life, and of the wom^n^life, and of the man-life of the 
country. 

National Consumers' League, 
Baltimore^ November 14, 19 17. 

WE have a curious form of government, not 
only in the fact that it is a departure 
from the political traditions of mankind every- 
where, but in that it involves, I think, more 
than any other government in the world, the co- 
operation of the volunteer spirit. 

People are wont to say in America that when- 
ever a grievance arises it is discussed, an or- 
ganization is formed, its officers get together 
and appoint a committee and then it is all over. 
In a sense that is so. We do multiply commit- 
tees. We get up societies and associations and 
leagues until we are sometimes weighted down 
with the multifariousness of our diverse occu- 
pations and interests, and are disposed to ques- 

[149] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

tion whether or not many of them may not be 
futile. Yet I make bold to say that if we were 
to withdraw from the effective government of 
the United States the voluntary effort which 
is represented by such associations, our govern- 
ment would scarcely exist at all. 

There are governments which take into their 
keeping all of the interests and all of the life of 
their people. They make a calendar by which 
their people live. They have the trusteeship and 
custodianship of the intellectual and of the spir- 
itual life of their people. They are what might 
be called, if we were to borrow the language of 
modern industry, completely integrated govern- 
ments, and from the cradle to the grave the citi- 
zen is merely playing an assigned part in the 
life of the state, which is higher than the citizen, 
and for which and for whose glory the citizen 
exists. 

Ours is an entirely different policy, an entirely 
different theory of government. We are very 
jealous about institutionalizing our government. 
We are loath to make laws. I realize that the 
vast volumes of published laws which come from 
Congress and the state legislatures every year 
seem enormous, but most of these laws are to 
change people's names or do other immaterial 
things. The actual body of fresh institutional 
law passed in any one year in the United States 
is exceedingly small, and fundamental changes 
are made slowly, with reluctance. We are ex- 

[150] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

ceedingly loath to take away from the individual 
or from groups of individuals any part of the 
powers or rights or privileges or liberties which 
at one time they enjoyed, no matter how incon- 
sistent they may have become with a more ad- 
vanced state of our industrial civilization. 

For a supplement to this institutionalizing of 
our life we rely upon voluntary effort, upon 
leagues and associations and committees and 
groups. Their function with us is a pioneering 
function. They take up the slack of our life; 
between complete autocracy of government and 
a neglect almost as complete by government of 
many of the interests of life, the voluntary asso- 
ciations perform their function. They discover 
the undiscovered country; they keep track of the 
development of things, and they agitate for 
remedies; they often supply remedies. 

I do not want to pursue the speculative sug- 
gestion too far, because it is not necessary to 
justify the existence of the Consumers' League 
or of any kindred organization. What we ac- 
tually do is to go out into the life of America 
and find those things which are costing us more 
than we can afford to pay, things which cannot 
be counted in dollars and cents, which are just 
over the horizon of the legislature's eye, things 
which the legislative body has not yet appre- 
hended, as it were. We get those deadly costs 
and drag them into light and place them within 
the horizon of the legislature, so that after a while 

[151] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

what has been discovered by some such society 
as ours as a neglected social duty, comes to be 
recognized as an unescapable social obligation. 

I cannot stop to illustrate what the Consum- 
ers' League has given to the people of the United 
States, but if you will run over in your minds such 
organizations as our League, or the Child Labor 
Committee, or the Civil Service Reform League, 
and mentally take off the statute books of 
the country the things which have been put there 
through such voluntary effort, or take out of 
our public life and consciousness the recognitions 
which we have been forced to make through the 
education which has come from such societies, 
you will realize, I think, that organizations like 
these are, in a sense, the forerunners of govern- 
ment. They are an essential part of the Ameri- 
can theory of government, of the American gov- 
ernment itself; they are as essential as are the 
more formalized parts of it, which appear in 
persons who hold public office, or in laws which 
appear written down in cold words upon the 
statute books. 

The importance of the whole speculation to me 
is this : Our country is, of course, in the most se- 
rious situation it has ever been in our history, se- 
rious not alone because we are engaged in a great 
war. Terrible as wars are and terrible as this 
war is, we have had trying times in this country 
before, and have been engaged in wars when 
the right seemed to hang by a very delicate bal- 

[152] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

ance; there were many periods of time when it 
seemed as though the right might perhaps not 
prevail. We are in a serious condition because 
this war is the first war in history since modern 
industrialism came into existence. It is the first 
war in the world on such a large scale and among 
highly civilized peoples since transportation be- 
came so large a factor in life. It is the first war 
of any large proportion since the recent and very 
great advances of science have been made, and, 
therefore, it is the most deadly war. I do not 
mean in the actual number of killed, but I mean 
in the destructive efifect upon the human ele- 
ments engaged in it, it is surely the most deadly 
war that we have ever had. 

It is the first war in which such enormous 
masses of men have been engaged. On the other 
side of the ocean the entire man-power of the 
nations is mobilized, until all fields of life have 
had men drafted away from them. From all the 
callings, from the most necessary of all, agri- 
culture, men have been taken and have been con- 
verted, for the time being into men of war, and 
tremendous problems have resulted from this. 

Only one or two of these problems can be con- 
sidered by us at this time. The United States 
has gone into this war. Inevitably, the taking of 
a million, or a million and a half, or two million, 
or any other large number of men out of the in- 
dustrial and commercial life of our nation is go- 
ing to make itself felt. There will be fewer men 

[153] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

in the workshops. There will be fewer men in the 
professions. There will be fewer men in the col- 
leges, either as students or as teachers. There 
will be fewer men in agriculture and in many of 
the industries which we have regarded as vital. 
As yet, the draft is relatively small; as the war 
progresses, it is going to be increasingly large, 
and as the draft increases, the need for an indus- 
trial output will grow correspondingly greater. 

Those nations with whom we are allied in this 
conflict are getting further and further away 
from their former productivity. Their work- 
shops and factories are being filled by boys and 
women who have learned to perform only one 
operation of what was originally a craft or a 
trade. The all-around craftsmen, the journey- 
men working in industry, are becoming fewer and 
fewer in those countries, while on the other 
hand their natural resources are necessarily much 
diminished and are constantly decreasing. This 
throws back upon us, as the freshest, most unex- 
hausted and I hope, in a proper sense, the least 
exhaustible of all the countries arrayed on our 
side, an increasing burden to feed and supply 
the world. 

Now, unfortunately, machinery has given us 
one great delusion. People have imagined that 
when a machine was operated by a steam engine 
or by an electric motor, the steam engine or the 
electric motor actually did all the work and the 
people who were attending it while it operated 

[154] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

were more or less negligible. As a consequence, 
we indulged ourselves in the very unfortunate 
and often fatal belief that unlimited hours of 
labor were possible because it was the machines 
which were doing the work. And now with this 
pressure upon us from all over the world for an 
increased supply of food and industrial mate- 
rials of all kinds, the great temptation is to hug 
that delusion to our hearts and demand of our 
men, women and children in industry that 
they give us longer hours of work. We over- 
look the fact, which we had lately begun to ap- 
preciate, that the person who tends the power- 
driven machine is far more susceptible to ex- 
haustion, is far more open to fatigue and to the 
poisons that come from over-exertion and affect 
the system than ever before. 

We are 'likely to overlook that truth. Yet if 
we do overlook it, we shall have in addition to 
the terrible cost of the loss of life involved in bat- 
tle, an equally terrible though far less spectacular 
cost at home in the devitalized life of the men and 
women and children in industry upon whom, as 
a foundation, the whole social, industrial and 
military structure of the country must rest. 

Now, because of our realization of these things 
the call comes to the Consumers' League — as one 
of these semi-governmental institutions, as one 
of these silent partners in the government — that 
if it ever was busy it shall now redouble its busi- 
ness; that if it ever had a call to point out to 

[155] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the American people the drain on life from in- 
dustrialism and long hours of labor and insani- 
tary housing and the like, that call shall now be 
raised to the nth. power. For this is the moment 
when the imagination of the American people is 
most likely to fail on that subject. They are most 
likely to demand goods in increasing quantities 
and not to stop to ask the cost of them. 

We are taking out of industrial life now a mil- 
lion and a half of men. The number of women 
employed in our industries is being greatly in- 
creased. I have no doubt that the inspectors 
who are charged with the duty of enforcing State 
child labor laws are having more and more in- 
sistent demands from employers that they relax 
their vigilance in the interest of the national 
output. I have not the least doubt, as a matter 
of fact I have some very definite knowledge, that 
employers who have contracts with the Govern- 
ment or with the Allies, or who make things more 
or less necessary to the life of the people, are 
constantly saying to themselves and to State en- 
forcing agencies and to me as Secretary of War 
and as a member of the Council of National De- 
fense: "This is not the time to worry about 
those restrictions ; this is not the time to enforce 
these laws about children and women and their 
hours and condition of labor; too large and mo- 
mentous events are moving now for anybody to. 
be delayed by these things." That demand is being 
made everywhere. Now, the duty of the Con- 

[156] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

sumers* League and of every member of it, and 
of everybody who knows its philosophy and be- 
lieves in it, is to set his face resolutely against 
everything that on any pretext seeks to break 
down those barriers which we have set up 
through years of patient labor, against the ener- 
vation and dissipation of the child-life and of 
the woman-life and of the man-life of this coun- 
try. 

While we have sometimes done some things in 
the way of relaxation I think the Council of Na- 
tional Defense has not done very much in that 
direction, and it is safe to say that the Govern- 
ment has rather advanced the standards de- 
manded in industry since the war began than 
relaxed them. I feel perfectly certain as to nine- 
tenths of the work done for the Federal Govern- 
ment since we went into this war, that the con- 
ditions of hours, of pay, of sanitation and su- 
pervision under which the work is done, are bet- 
ter than they would have been under circum- 
stances existing prior to our entrance. But I say 
this not to claim credit. I say it because to that 
extent the Government has recognized this most 
solemn of all facts, that it will do us no good 
whatever to send our sons to France to fight for 
our political rights if, while they are waging the 
battle, we surrender our industrial and our social 
rights here at home. 

We are gradually learning, I think, that lib- 
erty is of a piece with all of its parts ; all of which 

[157] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

we must acquire if we are to enjoy any one or 
more of them. I have the right to go to Florida 
and spend the winter. It does me no good. I have 
not the time and I have not the money, so that 
my one-cornered Hberty is an ideal possession 
and is enjoyed only when I have the leisure to 
indulge in imaginary pleasure. And so it is 
with political liberties. It does us no good to 
be able to vote for people; it does us no good to 
be able to call ourselves free and to describe our 
land as the land of the free unless we have all 
the component parts of real freedom. And that 
means unless we have the political liberty to recast 
our industrial life so that it will really be a life of 
opportunity to the humblest person who shares it. 
Now, our sons are going to France. When 
they have finally done the thing which they must 
do, when they have finally established on the 
frontiers of France the eternal dominance of 
free over autocratic institutions, when they have 
done that, they will come home. When they 
come back they will see the Statue of Liberty. 
They will sail into New York harbor proud of 
their victories, proud of their honors. And 
when they come I do not want them to find here a 
dissipated and depressed life. I do not want them 
to find that they have been trying to gain one cor- 
ner of freedom while the others have been ut- 
terly lost ; but I want them to come back to, wives 
and sisters and mothers and brothers and chil- 
dren filled with robust health, people who have 

[158] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

worked in industry and commerce, people who 
have produced the goods upon which Hfe de- 
pends, people who have filled the workshops and 
the factories and the fields with labor, done under 
wholesome conditions. Let them find that, as 
they were fighting at one end of-the frontier and 
winning one corner of freedom's fields, we at 
home were enlarging the boundaries of indus- 
trial liberty, that we were laying out new bounda- 
ries of real freedom here among ourselves, that 
we were enlarging the lessons we had hitherto 
learned of the value, the indispensableness of 
wholesome conditions for people who perform the 
labor of the world, and establishing conditions 
which it will be a privilege for them to come back 
to rather than a grief. 

It is the special function of the Consumers' 
League to continue its work along that line. May 
I drop my character as President of the League 
for a moment, in order to thank the League 
for the help it has already given? I have, as 
most of you know, borrowed the General Secre- 
tary of the Consumers' League. She will tell 
you, and I have not the slightest objection to its 
being told, that one particular branch of work 
about which she happens to know, the privates' 
uniforms of the Army of the United States, is 
not being done in sweatshops. Not one of those 
uniforms is being made in sweatshops ! Arrange- 
ments have been made for the manufacture of the 
clothing of the Army, so that it is now substan- 

[159] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

tially all being made under sanitary conditions, 
not in the homes of people who have to live in con- 
gested places, but under suitable restrictions as to 
hours of labor and under proper wage scales, so 
that for once at least the Government of the 
United States assumes the character of a model 
employer in a vital industry. 

That it was possible to find the enlightenment 
to bring about this result is one of the glories of 
the Consumers' League. A victory has been won 
here at home, one that will not appear in the 
newspapers as will a victory at arms, but yet a 
real victory for better conditions. 

You have the opportunity as you scatter 
throughout the various States of this Union to 
raise your voices against a relaxation of the 
standards which you have so largely achieved. 
You have an opportunity to be explicit in teach- 
ing and impressing the lesson that we cannot 
afford, when we are losing boys in F'rance, to lose 
children in the United States at the same time; 
that we cannot afford when this nation is suffer- 
ing a drain upon the life of its young manhood, 
which is not learning the crafts by which the in- 
dustrial and agricultural life of the nation is here- 
after to be sustained — we cannot afford to have 
the vitality of women workers of the United 
States depressed. If the Consumers' League and 
its affiliated and kindred organizations will take 
its stand on this platform and preach it con- 
stantly, in season and out of season, then truly, 

[160] 



THE REPUBLIC AS EMPLOYER 

while some of the direct losses of this war will 
be irremediable, there will nevertheless be some 
by-products from it which will count for social 
gains among us. After the wastage of the war 
has really come to an end, there will be a solid 
foundation of ground gained here at home upon 
which further social advance and reconstruction 
can proceed. 



[161] 



PROBLEMS OE THE MELTING POT 

A broken accent does not mean a broken mind or any 
lack of loyalty, but let us not hesitate a second when we 
find a man eating our bread and drinking of the milk of 
plenty who is disloyal! 

Annual Convention of Police Chiefs, 
Washington, December 4, 191 7. 

HERE is assembled one of the most impor- 
tant bodies of men in America. I say that, 
in spite of the fact that I am a member of it. I 
trust your memories are not so short nor your 
records so ill kept as to fail to disclose the fact that 
years ago I was elected a member of the Inter- 
national Association of Chiefs of Police, and that 
I have since carried the card of the association in 
my pocket. I remember there was some little 
controversy in our association on the question of 
whether an election to honorary membership 
lasted more than a single year. I don't know 
how that trouble was settled. But always, when 
I go to a strange place, I carry my card so that 
if by any chance I shall be mistaken for some 
man with other than honorable intentions, I 
will be able to impress upon any of your sub- 
ordinates the fact that I am to be treated with 

[162] 



PROBLEMS OF THE MELTING POT 

proper consideration and to have all favors 
shown. 

As a matter of fact, I have had a great many 
years of intimate association with policemen and 
police commissioners. For nine or ten years as 
City Solicitor of Cleveland, I was the police 
prosecutor. Chief Koehler used to say that it was 
his business to arrest men and mine to convict a 
few of those he arrested, and Cooley's job — Dr. 
Cooley was the Director of Public Welfare — to 
parole all I convicted. Later, when I came to be 
Mayor of Cleveland, I had the rare privilege of 
constant association with a man whose name 
ought to be in some way permanently enrolled in 
the records of this association as one of the really 
great police chiefs that this country has had — 
I mean W. S. Rowe, present Police Chief of 
Cleveland. Most of you must know Chief Rowe. 
In all the years I knew him, it was his mind that 
was doing the organizing and the solid, steady 
work upon which the construction of a police force 
must depend for its soundness and stability. 
When he came to be chief of the department, his 
work was characterized by a sense of justice and 
a plain, homely common sense, which made 
his administration an outstanding one and which 
contributed very greatly, so far as Cleveland was 
concerned, to placing the business of a policeman 
upon a very high plane in the public respect of 
the community. I saw in the papers some days 
ago that Chief Rowe had decided to resign. If 

[163] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

that is true, it ends, I think, forty-two or forty- 
three years of continuous service, and while I 
have no present recollection of what the record 
books should show, I am confident that an exami- 
nation of that record from the first day he went 
in as a patrolman would not show a single justi- 
fiable criticism upon his career. 

So you see I have had some contact with police- 
men. I am having a very much valued contact 
with policemen now. The War Department is in- 
terested in the training of a great army. The 
country is in a situation where the possibility of 
trouble exists in many of our cities in various 
parts of the country. We are dealing with an era 
in the enforcement of police regulations and the 
preservation of peace and order in our communi- 
ties, which is accompanied by peculiar difficulties 
^nd embarrassments. The War Department is 
called upon in many instances to cooperate in the 
task. On Sunday last, happening to be in the 
city of Columbia, South Carolina, I saw a mili- 
tary patrol on the streets — soldiers doing the 
work of policemen, — limiting their activities of 
course to soldiers who were in the town, but 
walking arm in arm and hand in hand, both in 
fact and in theory, with the civilian policemen, 
who were looking after their own work. I was 
delighted to find that this military police force, 
established to care for the soldier part of the 
new population of the city, was fitting in har- 
moniously and that the soldiers respected the po- 

[164] 



PROBLEMS OF THE MELTING POT 

lice and the police respected the soldiers. Ap- 
parently a clear understanding has been brought 
about between the military and civilian police- 
men by which cooperation is everywhere achieved 
and harmonious work is being done. 

But our activities go further than that; in or- 
der that this army shall be made a strong and 
vigorous army, the military camps must permit 
no opportunity for unruly and lawless persons to 
come into the neighborhood and practice their 
wiles and vices. The Congress of the United 
States, acting through the War Department and 
granting to it very wide powers, has made it very 
evident that it is the will of the people that the 
environment of our training camps shall be kept 
clean and wholesome. The Department of Jus- 
tice is working to the same end, and so are other 
agencies, both governmental and unofficial. 

In the last analysis, however, the situation in 
any community rests primarily on the people who 
live there, and their representatives of law and 
order. The War Department is looking to the 
Chiefs of Police of the United States to co- 
operate with it in carrying out the purposes of 
Congress and the purposes of the Government in 
creating an Army which will not only be able to 
win victory on the battlefield but will be truly 
representative of the best civilian standards of 
the United States. 

Therefore I started out with the statement that 
this is one of the bodies of men in America which 

[165] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

at this moment I believe to be among the most 
important. Our country is at war! We have 
just started in that war and in all human likeli- 
hood our energies and activities will be more and 
more fully engaged in it. It will be necessary for 
us to send larger and larger bodies of troops. We 
can, if we choose to, send over men with balance 
and training, men who know how to command, 
and citizens who know how to live in those foreign 
countries and who will win two kinds of victories 
when they go over there — one over their enemies 
and one over themselves. They will bring back 
two kinds of laurels — the laurels that successful 
soldiers bring back in the accomplishment of the 
purposes of their nation when the treaties come 
to be written — the other kind of laurel, the respect 
and affection of the civil population with whom 
they have lived, who in after years will think with 
affection of the men of this nation. I take very 
great joy from the fact that General Pershing was 
in Mexico for many months — the greater part of 
that time at one place — and when he came out 
of Mexico, he was accompanied by a very large 
part or all of the civil population of the surround- 
ing country. Our troops were there not as con- 
querors ; they were there just as men, having the 
military object of protecting our own fron- 
tier, and not practicing cruelty upon the civil 
population among whom they were situated, and 
they gave peace and quiet and confidence and in- 
dustry and opportunity to those people such as 

[166] 



PROBLEMS OF THE MELTING POT 

they had never had before. General Pershing 
and his troops came back to the United States 
out of Mexico with a great train of Mexican 
farmers, merchants and small people among 
whom they had lived, who came out with them 
because they preferred civilization as represented 
by General Pershing's army, to the lawless con- 
ditions which had obtained in their own country 
for a long period of time. When our Army comes 
back from France, I don't want it to win the 
French people away from their own soil and bring 
them along, unless they want to come. I don't 
imagine, knowing the tenderness of a Frenchman 
for his own vines and pastures and gardens, that 
this will be one of the products of victory in this 
war; I can't imagine that many French people 
will come back with our soldiers. But I want our 
soldiers to bring the hearts of the French people 
with them, I want them to bring back their re- 
spect, and the only way they can do that is by in- 
stilling into them such principles as high-minded 
men should have, so that they may have respect 
for the rights of others, and by so training their 
minds to honor and justice before they go over, 
that the French people will recognize in them the 
highest type of citizenship. 

You gentlemen, in that case, will have to help. 
The Chiefs of Police and the policemen of the 
cities in the neighborhood of these camps are 
representatives of law and order. A harsh and 
intolerant attitude towards the soldier, an un- 

[167] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

intelligent attitude, will be provocative of resent- 
ment, while a kindly and sympathetic attitude to- 
wards him will inoculate him with high-minded 
ideals of law and order. In addition to what he 
gets from the War Department in the nature of 
military training I want him to get from the 
cities in which he lives the idea of citizenship, and 
I shall be perfectly content to have these young 
soldiers of ours acquire their idea of duty and of 
justice from you, if you will make it manifest to 
them what your own ideas on those subjects are. 
You have one other duty in this critical time. 
We are already at war with Germany, and 
the President to-day has asked Congress to de- 
clare war on Austria-Hungary. There are num- 
bers of people in the United States who were 
born in Germany and in the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire. There are many people whose ances- 
tors came from one or the other of those 
countries. Many of those people came to this 
country because they were dissatisfied with 
their institutions, dissatisfied with the opportuni- 
ties which those countries afforded them — many 
of those people who have come here have been 
rebaptized with the American spirit. They have 
married this country for better or for worse, 
and they are citizens of this country. There are 
some of them who think they were married to this 
country, who have been suddenly and rudely di- 
vorced. There are some men who made a mock 
marriage of it. I am persuaded that there are 

[168] 



PROBLEMS OF THE MELTING POT 

not many such, but with the growth in intensity 
of our efforts in this war, there has developed a 
feeUng that the activities of such disloyal people 
as there may be must be suppressed by you. 
Therefore it is part of your opportunity in this 
hour of universal service to our country and 
its ideals, it is part of your opportunity to 
search out disloyalty and to prevent the sapping 
of the strength of our nation here at home, to re- 
strain any seditious activities on the part of those 
who have enjoyed the protection of American in- 
stitutions and have nothing to give in return but 
the undermining of its liberties and its strength. 
That is a great opportunity for you, and it is an 
especially difficult opportunity because it calls 
upon you to discriminate with wisdom andpatience 
between those who are disloyal and those who 
merely have ties of blood and tradition with one 
of these countries, but who really and in spirit are 
Americans. You and I are both too wise and we 
have had too much experience in this country to 
imagine that a broken accent means a broken 
mind, or that a non- American name, or the inabil- 
ity to speak readily our language means any 
lack of loyalty in the man or in his make-up. 
So I say it ought to be your effort, as it ought to 
be the effort of all right-thinking people in this 
country, to learn to apply the principles of justice 
and fair dealing that have protected the oppressed 
of the world for more than one hundred years, 
and to prevent all those injustices that come 

[169] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

from haste, ignorance and suspicion. But never 
let us hesitate a second when we find a man Hving 
here, eating of our bread and drinking of the milk 
of plenty, when we find that man disloyal ! The 
man who strikes us in the back, who undertakes 
to sap our strength through fire or otherwise, 
let us see that he is rendered harmless to accom- 
plish any such purpose against the Government 
and our people. I doubt whether any group of 
people in this country has a more deliberate 
responsibility than you have. It covers the whole 
continent of America in its scope. It is part of 
your daily duty ; it is a matter of having an oppor- 
tunity and these unusual circumstances and the 
conduct of this war will depend to a very large 
degree upon the wisdom and patience, fair-mind- 
edness and vigor with which you exercise the 
functions that are entrusted to you. 

In the training of our army those things must 
be separated out that make up that part of the 
town which collects the worst kinds of young 
men — there must be a separation of those 
things from a training camp in order that our 
soldiers may be well in body and well in mind and 
spirit. Napoleon said that in war, morale is to 
force as three to one. Everybody in this room, 
everybody in this nation, wants us to win this 
war. Now we want to win it with our strength 
and our strength is a basis of four parts ; one of 
them is our force, according to Napoleon, the 
other three are our morale, according to Napo- 

[170] 



PROBLEMS OF THE MELTING POT 

leon. You gentlemen are in part the manufac- 
turers of morale of the nation. You are, there- 
fore, contributors to the manufacture of three- 
fourths of the aggregate of the nation's natural 
strength with which we go into this enterprise. 

I hope that everybody in this room will read 
the President's message to Congress to-day un- 
less he has already read it. Every now and then 
somebody says that he does not know what this 
war is about — he does not know why the United 
States is in it — he does not know what we want 
to get out of it. Of course the fact is that we don't 
want to get anything out of it; we want to do 
something. The President, as our leader, has 
hitched his wagon to a star and leads not only 
America but the people of the world. This is 
what it means for the greatest nation in the 
world to enter into this conflict. We want to 
establish justice among men and equal oppor- 
tunity among men. We want to establish the 
same sort of respect for law and order among the 
nations that you gentlemen have spent your lives 
trying to establish among the civilian population 
of the cities of this country. Just consider the 
things that you are trying to enforce day by 
day — justice and respect for the rights of others, 
consideration and sympathy. I know the police- 
man far better than to imagine that the club which 
he carries is anything more than the symbol of his 
function. Occasions arise in the life of the com- 
munity when the club must be used, but they are 

[171] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

rare and exceptional. In the world at large and 
at the present moment, we have the spectacle of a 
member of the family of nations corresponding 
in this larger sphere to the disturber of the city 
streets, and he must be dealt with in the same 
way as a disturber. Our mission in this war 
like your mission in the cities in which you live 
is to attempt to establish a definite atmosphere 
of just conditions among men. 



[172] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

/ knozv how the Channel looks by night. I have seen 
those zvaves when the moon was shining on them, and I 
have thought, "Surely, this is the golden path that leads to 
the Favored Isles," I have seen the m^oon shining down 
on the chalk cliffs and have thought the foam-Uecked 
waves a wonderful sight. But when I think of those 
chalk cliffs and those moon-lit waves now, I see only the 
white shrouds of countless women and children who have 
gone down with the sea for their grave and the white 
cliffs for their monument. 

State Council of Defense, Richmond, 
December 5, 191 7. 

HAPPY is the nation which in the midst of a 
great war can return from the examination 
of its conscience with a smile. After sevenscore 
years devoted to the arts of peace and industry; 
after having spent money and men in experiments 
in free institutions, and after devoting itself to the 
culture of intellect and morality, at last this great 
nation finds itself no longer able to abstain from 
foreign complications, but actually plunged into 
the heart of a great war. When it proceeds to 
take stock of its conscience and to ask itself 
whether its cause is just, it comes back from that 
examination with a spring in its step, its head 
erect, conscious that it did all it could to preserve 

[173] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

peace among- men and that when it took up arms, 
it took them up in defense of priceless principles, 
more valuable than life itself. 

I have sometimes sought to ask myself when 
this war began, and I find that each answer I give 
has ancestors, and I have to inquire as to the 
biography of those ancestors; and when occasion- 
ally I think I am at a resting place, I discover 
another set of ancestors for this war. 

I shall not undertake any lengthy examination 
of history to-night, but I ask your attention at 
the outset to that Frederick, who was called Great, 
and whose most spectacular achievement, upon 
reaching his throne, was to set upon Austria 
and rip from her a splendid ancestral domain, 
apparently for no reason except that he needed 
it, and having no justification, except that Marie 
Theresa was young and beautiful, which did not 
matter; and helpless, which did not matter; and 
a woman, which did not matter. His next illus- 
trious experiment was the partition of Poland. 
With a cynicism which I think has not been equal- 
ed in recent history, and has no parallel among 
his contemporaries, he scoffed at the idea that 
kings and dynasties were limited or bound by 
moral considerations, or indeed by any considera- 
tion, except force and success. And that same 
Frederick, who was called Great, and whose prin- 
ciples are those upon which the reigning house of 
Prussia has built its subsequent conduct, is the 
greatest Hohenzollern of them all. And so, 

[174] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

when we think of this war and try to trace 
it back to its ancestors, I think we can, without 
injustice and with due regard to historical veri- 
ties, say that this war had its birth in the prom- 
inence which was given by Frederick the Great to 
certain immoral doctrines affecting the conduct 
of states and governments. 

These immoral doctrines are that a state is not 
bound by the laws of honor ; that treaties made by 
it are merely covenants of convenience and that 
they may be torn up into scraps of paper at the 
will of whichever of the signers is able with his 
strength to cover his dishonor. The second prin- 
ciple is that no consideration of humanity shall 
stand in the way of the success of a military en- 
terprise. These doctrines are hateful and con- 
temptible to us. The man who by virtue of his 
physical strength and brute force imposes his 
will upon his neighbors is deserving the con- 
tempt of the people among whom he lives; and a 
man who by his physical force imposes it upon 
the weakness and defenselessness of children is 
a bully and coward. 

Now, time was when that was not true of na- 
tions. But it has become true of nations and the 
difficulty with the German Emperor and the cause 
of this war lies in the fact that the government 
of Germany imagines that civilization consists of 
universities, learned doctors, the transformation 
of chemicals into deadly compounds and physical 
elements into new substances of manufacture, 

[175] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

without reference to spiritual values and moral 
growth. 

When the present reigning house began its 
most recent career of conquest, its first victim 
was the kingdom of Denmark, from which it 
took Schleswig-Holstein. In order to make a 
certain concession to the good opinion of the 
world, which they were still small enough to 
desire, they made a treaty with Denmark 
by which at some time within ten years after 
the conclusion of the war the people of the con- 
quered territories were to vote as to whether they 
desired to be detached from Denmark and at- 
tached to Prussia. When the ten years were 
nearly over and there had been no vote, certain 
delegates came to see the Iron Chancellor about 
the right to vote on the question, reminding him 
of the provisions of that treaty. He got out the 
treaty, tore it into scraps and handed it to them, 
saying: "That is my answer," After the close of 
the war between Prussia and Austria and just be- 
fore the Franco-Prussian war, the then King of 
Prussia planned that certain territory should be 
violently detached from Austria and annexed to 
Prussia. When remonstrated with concerning 
this decree the King said, "All my ancestors have 
added to their dominions by conquest, and I must 
add to mine by conquest." 

Bismarck, for reasons which he explained, op- 
posed this plan — not because it was not honest, 
but because he did not think it was wise ; and so 

[176] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

at that particular moment nothing was done. 
When the Franco-Prussian war came and the 
Prussian army swarmed down into Alsace and 
Lorraine the same principle of warfare prevailed, 
without the slightest observance of the laws of 
humanity. The German army surrounded Stras- 
burg and turned their guns, not on the forts, but 
on the spires of the cathedral. The first victims 
were some school children, who were studying 
their lessons in a school building in the quietest 
part of the city, which was struck by the heaviest 
artillery fires. 

Now, that was not because the German people 
are cruel by nature. I must relate to you a story 
which was told me by a man who was in Belgium 
when the Germans invaded that country. I do 
not, of course, know that the story is true. He 
said he met a German soldier who carried in his 
hand a bird-cage, in which he had a live canary, 
and this soldier told him of the slaughter of hun- 
dreds of women and children in the invaded town, 
of burned homes and bombarded churches, but 
seemed to imagine his rescue of the canary sig- 
nified his humanity. Now, it was a humane sen- 
timent which made him rescue the bird, but it was 
the following of a hellish principle which made 
the German regard as justifiable the burning of 
houses, of religious institutions, and the slaught- 
ering of women and children for the purpose of 
terrifying the inhabitants of the city. Therefore, 
it is not that a German citizen is not a good man, 

[177] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

but from the time of that Frederick, who was 
called Great, down to now, a misguided and mis- 
begotten philosophy, that might is right, that the 
leadership of the imperial Hohenzollern is 
righteous, has permeated and poisoned the 
thought of the German nation. 

And so, when this war broke out, almost the 
first movements of Germany were true to form. 
They were what any informed student of history 
would have had reason to expect. She brought 
her ships off the coast of England, not by its 
forts, where its ships of war were, but along its 
undefended coast, its peaceful seaside villages, its 
little summer resorts. They stood fourteen or 
fifteen miles out to sea and under cover of dark- 
ness bombarded sleeping towns, killing defense- 
less women and children. When the great Zep- 
pelin raids began to come over England there was 
no attempt made to attack fortified places. Their 
whole object was to use fright fulness as a means 
of driving the people of England into submission. 

Now, one of the greatest surprises to the Ger- 
man government, but which doesn't surprise any 
other people in the world, is this — that you can't 
scare Englishmen into subjection by killing 
babies. Nobody knows what is in store for us in 
this war. We are in it until we win it. It is just 
as well to have some understanding at the begin- 
ning and Germany should learn now that if, with 
the help of the devil, she is able to find some way 
to cross the three thousand miles of ocean that 

[178] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

separate us and to make a secret and stealthy 
warfare upon the women and babies of this coun- 
try, she will not scare our men either. 

The same policies were pursued with the sub- 
marines. We built some submarines in this 
country. I think we built the first — I am not 
sure of that — but we built them as implements of 
war, to attack warships. Nobody ever dreamed 
of such use as they have been put to. But when 
this war had been going on a while Germany be- 
gan to use them against undefended merchant- 
men, and while she was proclaiming that one of 
her objects in this war was freedom of the seas, 
she was really trying to rid the seas of commerce. 
She attacked that kind of commerce which, under 
every doctrine and canon of international law, 
should have been immune from attack. The sub- 
marine became a weapon of assassination. What 
is an assassin? He is a man who's afraid to 
fight; a man who will not take the risks of a test; 
a man who will not come into the open, but who 
selects a dark night when you are going to a place 
where you expect, where you have every right to 
expect, to be peaceful and sa,fe; who puts a 
mask over his face and, stealing up behind, stabs 
you in the back. Does not every bit of that defi- 
nition apply to the method by which Germany 
undertook to rid the seas of neutral vessels ? 

Germany began to use her submarines against 
peaceful commerce with an idea of driving a 
strong competitor, although an honorable com- 

[179] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

petitor, from the seas. She used this weapon 
upon the commerce of a peaceful nation, a nation 
with which she had no quarrel; a nation which 
had welcomed her children and made them her 
citizens ; a nation which had opened her wonder- 
ful opportunities for education, peace and happi- 
ness to the children of Germany. 

America has been a generous and friendly rival 
for the industry and commerce of the world — a 
legitimate ambition, in which she struck great 
and ringing blows — but a country which, so far 
as Germany was concerned, never had action or 
thought of hostility, yet Germany unleashed these 
things, and sent them out to destroy our com- 
merce. 

She sank the Lusifania — not our vessel but 
partly filled with our people. I saw a picture 
shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania. It 
was the picture of the wife of an American citi- 
zen and her family which had been lost on that 
ship. I suppose there were many other like cases, 
but this particular picture somehow has burned 
itself into my memory. I have forgotten her 
name — I wish I could forget her history — but she 
was a beautiful woman, simply dressed; by her 
side were two fine boys and two little girls and 
in her lap a baby, smiling. All the affection of 
that family was centered in that baby but the 
legend under that picture was that all of them — 
mother, sons, daughters and baby — were victims 
in the Lusitania! They were not your babies, 

[180] 



Honor amoxVg nations 

thank God! not mine, thank God! but American 
babies and an American mother. Now some- 
where at the bottom of the deep, they have an un- 
known, unmarked grave because they took pas- 
sage on the Lusitania, a vessel protected by every 
canon of international law against that sort of 
attack or any sort of attack that did not give the 
people a chance to escape. 

I know how the Channel (now the grave of so 
many ships) looks by night. I have been to Eng- 
land many times before the war. I have seen 
those waves when the moon was shining on them 
and I have thought ''surely this is the golden path 
that leads to the Favored Isles." I have seen the 
moon shining down on the chalk cliffs, and have 
thought the foam-flecked waves a wonderful 
sight. But when I think of those chalk cliffs 
and those moonlit waves now, typifying for me 
the English Channel through its length from 
Ireland to Holland, I can see only the white 
shrouds of that woman and those lovely children, 
of countless women and children, who went down 
with the Lusitania that night, with the sea for 
their grave and the white cliffs for their monu- 
ment. 

After that sinking the United States served no- 
tice on Germany that she was violating the laws 
of nations ; that she was imperiling our rights to 
be upon the high seas; and the German govern- 
ment half-heartedly disclaimed the sinking of the 
Lusitania and gave a solemn promise that she 

[181] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

would not make an attack upon neutral commerce 
except in accordance with recognized rights and 
with opportunity for safe escape by the people on 
board. For some months our people said "Amer- 
ica has won a diplomatic victory," and we said 
of our great President ''How splendid his quiet 
spirit and his patient waiting!" 

Then some more ships were sunk in the same 
way and the German government served notice on 
us and sent us a map, marking out certain portions 
of the high seas which we might travel; certain 
very indefinite lines, certain unused, tortuous 
channels, long routes, which we might use with 
safety, provided we painted our ships in a pre- 
scribed fashion and did not send more than two 
a week. Then this extraordinary thing took 
place. The German Chancellor, the nearest ap- 
proach to a responsible official that there is in 
that irresponsible country — he is responsible to 
the Emperor, and the Emperor is not responsible 
to anybody — the Chancellor rose in the Reichstag 
and said he had opposed unlimited submarine 
warfare when it had been first suggested, not be- 
cause he was too good, not because it was wrong, 
but because he did not think that they had sub- 
marines enough to carry it out. And he said, 
"Now that we have built more submarines I am 
in favor of it." In other words, a miserable 
tricky sort of diplomacy was all there was to his 
former promises. I am not sorry he imposed 
upon us. I am glad we had enough faith left in 

[182] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

the honor of nations to believe his falsehoods. 

We had a choice then; by that time the game" 
was perfectly clear. It was the intention of the 
Hohenzollern family to throw a shadow across 
Europe, beginning at the North Sea and extend- 
ing to the middle of Asia as a start. Their in- 
tention to destroy France was clear ; their purpose 
to destroy England was clear and the German 
Emperor did not hesitate to say to certain Ameri- 
cans, prominent Americans, "When I am through 
with the rest of these fellows, America had better 
look out." So, we had a choice to make. We 
could either cower and crawl to the feet of the 
Hohenzollerns and say, "O Mightiness, your 
f rightfulness has terrified me! Your power is 
too powerful ! I submit and become your subject 
State. I accept your form of Kultur," — or we 
could fight. We chose to fight. 

Sometimes I hear men say that there were peo- 
ple — nobody ever told me that he himself believed 
it — but I have heard men say that they believed 
that there were people who believed that we were 
fighting this war to help somebody else, England 
or France. Suppose we were. We are not ; but 
suppose we were. I do not know how it is with 
you, but I have a limitless admiration for the 
British and French people. I am not very sure 
that I would not be perfectly willing to fight for 
them and them only. But what America is actu- 
ally fighting for is not England or France; we 

[183] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

are fighting for what they are fighting for, and 
that is liberty. 

So far as the United States is concerned, we are 
exceedingly fortunate in this war that we are not 
the only people in the world who love liberty. If 
the Hohenzollern family had made up its mind to 
change the order of its conquests and to take us 
first and to finish up the rest when they had 
finished us — well, our contest would have been no 
different in the end, but very different in the 
middle. 

And so, my fellow citizens of Richmond, our 
country is in this war because of the unfathom- 
able hostility between autocracy and democracy; 
because of the inevitable conflict between irre- 
sponsible and immoral government and responsi- 
ble and moral government ; and because when our 
fathers left us this land of liberty, they did not 
mean that the seed should run out with you and 
me, but they meant that our children and our chil- 
dren's children should inherit the estate. 

Now, there are a few people in this country who 
are said to be doubtful ; there are larger numbers, 
I am told, who are indifferent; but the real state 
of mind of this country is one of patriotism and 
unanimity and I know it by every token by which 
man may judge. Not very long ago a colonel 
came into my office and said, ''Mr. Secretary, I 
am obliged to come and see you. I simply had to 
come and tell you what I have seen. I have just 
come from the State of Washington with a train 

[184] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

full of soldiers and our whole journey was one 
triumphal progress. At every stop the train made, 
the people flocked to welcome us, to cheer us, 
bringing bands to play for us. And so we came 
from the other end of the country, from the far 
Pacific to the Atlantic." 

But sometimes evidences of enthusiasm like 
this may be thought temporary. I have sat in 
Washington now since the war began, day by day, 
night by night, month by month. A large part of 
my task is to receive letters and persons, present- 
ing this message and this thought: "Here I am, 
here is my bank, here is my factory; here is my 
farm ; here are my resources, here is everything I 
have. How can the Government use them and 
me best in this emergency ?" And that has come 
from every part of the country. There was a 
great howl when the selective draft went into 
effect. Men came into my office and said, "The 
streets of this country will run with blood on the 
day of the draft." But they did not. Nowhere 
were there evidences that the youth of the country 
meant to do anything but prove themselves law- 
abiding citizens. The selective draft is the right 
thing. It is the modern thing. The old-fash- 
ioned mode of warfare called for old-fashioned 
means of enlistment; but this is a new-fashioned 
warfare and we must use modern means. We 
must do that thing which most speedily and ef- 
ficiently mobilizes the forces of the country, and 
all the forces. 

[185] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

The trouble is that we have been thinking in 
terms of ounces and pounds, pints and quarts, 
dollars and cents. And so when we came to make 
an army the first impulse was to make it along 
old lines, forgetting that we were not fighting an 
old kind of warfare, but a new warfare. The se- 
lective draft has itself killed most of the opposi- 
tion that was first evinced toward it. It is the best 
mode of gathering the necessary men, the fit men, 
and the mode that imposes the least burden on all 
the people and all the States. The people see that 
now. We were told that the people would not 
see it because the people were not logical ; but the 
people are logical and the people do see that the 
selective service is the logical service. 

The reason some people did not like the idea at 
first was because they feared it might be unfair 
and unequal; but when it was discovered that 
Congress intended an accurate and just operation 
of the law and that it should work to the univer- 
sal good of the whole people, we saw a different 
spirit and it has been accepted as the correct 
measure. 

When we began to assemble our Army, how 
wonderful our people showed themselves! For 
the last thirty or forty years we have been grow- 
ing in grace in the manner of our civilization, and 
the democracy of our institutions. We have 
been building playgrounds, public parks, and 
other institutions for the people of the cities and 
have been striving in every way to enrich the com- 

[186] 



HONOR AMONG NATIONS 

mon life of America, and so when the time came 
to build an army there was a demand that we 
build a civilized army. Now in these great army 
camps we are gathering the manhood of our coun- 
try. We are not only providing for them modern 
camps, furnishing them warm clothing, good 
food, and civilized and legitimate instruments of 
war, but the camps are placing every facility of 
civilization at the disposal of the men in training 
and what has actually been done proves that the 
smokestacks and the church steeples are blending 
their services for the good of our Army. 

I have already spoken much longer than I in- 
tended. I began with the reflection that it was 
well for a nation, in the midst of a great war, if 
it could return from an examination of its con- 
science with a smile. It is so with the United 
States. Our ancestors left us a wonderful in- 
heritance. To them it seemed such an inherit- 
ance as would always be safe, if we restrained 
our activities between two oceans. Under the 
influence of time, this inheritance has indoctri- 
nated the world and democracy is on the rising 
tide everywhere. 

It is well with us because our cause being just, 
our resources inexhaustible, our courage unfath- 
omable, our civilization not external, but essen- 
tial, — because all these things are true, it is well 
with us in this pivotal moment in the history of 
the human race that we are sending our Army 

[187] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

over to be knightly victors on the other side, and 
that we are joining the forces of the British and 
French in the greatest contest that ever engaged 
the energies of man. 



[188] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

Off in the far-flung corners of the globe the same 
sort of progress is being made; lately has come the ro- 
m,antic and poetic news that Jerusalem is in the hands 
of AUenby, and the children of civilization that sprang 
from that country are now in possession of their holy 
places and can walk untroubled by Saracen and Moham- 
medan as Richard Cceur de Lion wanted to walk in what 
was the promised land in years gone by. 

New York Southern Society, 
December 12, 1917. 

I THINK there has been no time in the history 
of this Society when I would more esteem the 
privilege and pleasure of addressing it than now. 
The year 191 7 is writing a new date line in our 
history. It will take none of the glory from any 
of our memories, it will leave us as a priceless in- 
heritance the great traditions of our race, out of 
which our institutions and our liberties have been 
fabricated ; but from this year many things which 
are separated in a sense will be all written under a 
new date, and the supremacy of common sacrifices 
in a common cause will make us more really a 
united people, more really a nation, than we have 
ever been in our entire history. 

People love one another, people understand one 
another better from having suffered together in 

[189] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the same cause. I remember a story that used to 
impress my young imagination, of Dr. Kane, the 
great Arctic explorer. He was walking down a 
street of London late in his life, and, coming up 
the street in the other direction, he met a man 
whom he had not seen for many years, but who 
had shared with him the hardships of one of those 
long, dark winters in the Arctic. Utterly 
changed the two men were, by age and years, and 
yet they stopped, there was a flash of recognition, 
and then, without a word, they rushed into one 
another's arms, and at the end of a long em- 
brace one of them said, ''Oh, it was so dark 
there for so long!" The memory of their com- 
mon suffering, of their common enthusiasm, in- 
domitable courage in the pursuit of a great idea, 
of their association in a heroic enterprise, made a 
bond which neither years nor intervening inter- 
ests could eradicate nor diminish. 

And so, after 19 17 the North and the South, 
the East and the West, peoples of all extractions 
and of all lineages and ancestries, will have a 
new feeling when they pronounce themselves 
Americans. The family of the nation has be- 
come continental. Many of these distinctions 
which once troubled us will be absorbed in the 
new glory of citizenship in the new nation. 

And this will be especially true because of the 
heroic character and the idealism of this enter- 
prise. Every now and then somebody tells me 
that he has heard somebody say that America is 

[190] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

fighting somebody's else war, and my instant re- 
flection is, well, suppose that were true? Is it 
not more heroic to save somebody's else life than 
your own? To whom do we build monuments, 
for whom do we cast heroes' medals — for the men 
who save their own lives or those who save the 
lives of others? What is the quality of heroism 
if it be not unselfish self-sacrifice? 

And yet it is not necessary, nay, it would not 
be true, to say that this is an unselfish expedi- 
tion in that sense or to that extent, for in very 
truth our nation is engaged in fighting its own 
battles, its own material battles — if that matters, 
but it does not. It is engaged in fighting its own 
spiritual battle ; it is engaged in saving the soul of 
democracy. 

Truly all wars which have been waged for 
the prestige of kings or the territorial extension 
of empires fail of justification. There is a qual- 
ity in this war which evokes a spiritual response, 
and that will be a new kind of cement for the 
making of a stronger and more triumphant people 
when it is over. 

And there is another exceedingly happy quality 
in this war, that we are not fighting alone. I 
am not even ambitious that the glory of the final 
conquest should come to us alone. I would far 
rather have the triumph of democracy the reward 
of the associated effort of democratic peoples 
everywhere ; so that when this war is over neither 
we nor they can have any monopoly of that virtue, 

[191] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

but will be partners in its glory, and so associates 
in ttie further progress which is to be made. 

Kor we must never forget, when we speak of 
democracy, that it is not an accomplishment, it is 
not a thing that has been done, but it is a prog- 
ress, it is a system of growth, and though to-day 
we might achieve what our limited vision pro- 
claims to us as the democratic ideal, its quality 
is such that when we stand on what now seems to 
us the highest peak in the range, there will ever 
be greater heights ahead to tempt and inspire us. 

And so, when this war is over, and the crude 
medievalism of the Hohenzollerns and the Haps- 
burgs is at last confronting its fate; when this 
contest is over and the David of democracy 
has dealt with the Goliath of medievalism and 
autocracy, there will still be work for David to do 
worthy of his best efforts, and in its accomplish- 
ment great benefits to the race will still remain to 
be achieved. 

People are sometimes disposed to adopt a com- 
plaining tone about our efforts; not many, but 
here and there one. There are two ways of look- 
ing at this war and our preparation for it. One 
is to look at what we have done, and one is to 
look at what we have not done. If we realize 
that practically every activity of the Government 
associated in this business has been required in a 
very short space of time to expand 3,000 per cent, 
if we take account of the things that actually have 
been achieved, not only will we find that we have 

[192] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

won the admiring commendation of visitors from 
the Old World, who are familiar with what they 
have done and are amazed at our progress, but 
we will find solid ground for pride in the strength, 
capacity and greatness of our own people. 

Now, I am perfectly aware that in any great 
enterprise where one starts in wishing to achieve 
everything, there are things in the first rush of 
preparation, for which the industry of the country 
is not yet adequately prepared, things which time 
will right; and so if you go about with a critical 
and fault-finding spirit, you can always find 
enough to satisfy that sort of spirit — it does not 
take much. 

But think of us as a people who really love 
peace, who for nearly a century and a half have 
devoted themselves to its ideals and its practices, 
whose affections have been engaged with the ac- 
complishments of peace and civilization, who have 
learned to love justice and who have embodied it 
in their own political and social institutions, who 
have established among themselves a generous 
competition in industrial and scientific and com- 
mercial progress, who have spread abroad among 
themselves processes of universal education, so 
that almost year by year the general level of the 
material and intellectual and spiritual life of their 
people has been visibly elevated. If you come to 
recognize in us that sort of people, devoting our- 
selves with an intense devotion to the working out 
of finer adjustments for human happiness and for 

[193] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the recognition of the rights of the individual, and 
then see us suddenly summoned to go back five 
hundred years to deal with a recrudescence of 
brute force, unilluminated by any sort of morality 
or humanitarian consideration, and then see what 
we have done in that space of time to readjust 
ourselves to this odious and unlovely thing that 
we are forced to do, I think you will agree not 
only that we have done great things, but that we 
can be reassured about civilization. 

Civilization does not mean the enfeeblement of 
a people. Disinclination to fight does not mean 
inability to fight. We can with confidence, from 
now on, pursue those processes which have hith- 
erto engaged us and seem to promise so much, 
always with the assured conviction that education 
does not destroy courage and that a civilized, 
peace-loving. God-fearing nation, if it has to pro- 
tect itself against brute aggression, has the ca- 
pacity, the concentration of purpose necessary; 
nay, that in democratic institutions there is that 
virtue which is perfectly sufficient to any contest 
it may be called upon to face. 

I shall not take your time to recount, in thou- 
sands and millions, either of dollars or of blank- 
ets, what the country has done. In the first place 
those figures mean very little, and in the second 
place, I cannot remember them. But this war 
requires three things: It requires money, men 
and morale. 

The great talents of the Secretary of the Treas- 
[194] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

ury have had a most extraordinary opportunity, 
most wonderfully improved, to mobilize the 
finances of this country back of this war. 

The Congress of the United States was faced 
with the question of mobilizing the men of this 
nation, and I think the reception given by the 
country to the solution they gave that problem 
shows the youthfulness and ability to learn of 
the American people. At the outset there were 
those who remembered when armies were gath- 
ered, such little armies as we used to have, by 
a drum and fife corps, and an orator here and 
there, who whipped the spirit of the community 
into an enthusiastic outbreak, and gathered in the 
willing and took them off to camp. Or some indi- 
vidual's popularity was appealed to to raise a 
company or a regiment, and men went more be- 
cause they admired and loved a particular captain 
than for other reasons. 

But we had observed what was going on 
abroad, and we saw that this kind of war 
meant the mobilization of the whole nation, and 
that to leave the volunteer to solve that problem 
meant such a disorganization of the industrial 
and commercial and social life of the country as 
probably would result also in a weakened army. 
And so the Congress said, "We will recognize at 
the outset the universality of the obligation of 
service and proclaim boldly that it is for the Gov- 
ernment to decide, for the nation, acting as an 

[195] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

aggregate, to decide where each man's talents can 
best be used." 

So they passed the law called euphemistically 
the Selective Service Law. And some people said, 
"Isn't it a draft?" And I, speaking below my 
breath, replied, **Yes." Somehow or other every 
time I mistrust democracy, I get punished for it. 

Finally the law was passed and a day was set 
for the registration of the young men of this 
country, and in a single day ten millions of them 
registered. No other country in recorded history 
ever did such a thing, and it was done by us so 
easily, so simply, so naturally, and so completely 
as a matter of course that it passed by without 
adequate notice of its significance. 

It was not merely obedience to a law, it was 
the acceptance of its spirit; and if there be a 
lingering doubt in the mind of any one as to that 
being true, let him go to Yaphank or to any other 
of the sixteen cantonments in which the National 
Army is being assembled, and he will find these 
young men, just a cross-section of the common 
life of this country — college professors, college 
students, merchants, mechanics, bankers, farmers, 
men with any kind of occupation or none, — all 
of them now filled with but one thought, as it 
comes to me in Washington by round-robins and 
by letters from friends and by reports of ob- 
servers and inspectors — but one thought, and that 
is, "Mr. Secretary, how soon can we go to 
France?" 

[196] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

In the meantime, the mobilization of the re- 
sources of this country is an equally inspiring 
chapter in this story. Even before the United 
States was in the war there were uneasy pushings 
forward of men in industry and commerce, say- 
ing, "Can't the Government find some way to es- 
tablish relations of usefulness for us to the Gov- 
ernment?" There was a feeling in the air, just as 
there is in the opera — I am borrowing an illustra- 
tion from John Fiske, I think — but there was a 
feeling in the air, just as there is in the opera, 
when the violins play a kind of tremolo, and one 
begins to have a sense that something is going to 
happen that transcends in importance the other 
things that have been going on upon the stage. 

And so from all over this nation there began 
to be a reaching of hands of helpfulness toward 
Washington, and when finally the President ad- 
dressed the Congress and war was declared and 
the die was cast, and we were shoulder to shoulder 
with Great Britain and France in this struggle, 
Washington became almost an inextricable con- 
fusion, men treading upon one another's heels 
and crowding one another away from the depart- 
ment buildings in their impetuous zeal to say, 
"What can we do and how can we be used?" 

And so all over this country there has gone on 
a gathering unison of spirit, a gathering desire 
for sacrifice. Industry is diverting itself from 
less important to more important things. What 
we used to know as capital and labor have for 

[197] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the most part forgotten their differences, and the 
imperial theme now that guides every man's 
thinking and every man's acting is service to the 
nation. 

Now, it strikes me as rather an interesting re- 
flection that while we are in this war to make the 
world safe for democracy, democracy is making 
itself manifest here among us ; for that is democ- 
racy — the cooperation, without distinction of 
fortune or opportunity, of all the men of the na- 
tion for the common good. 

We are recognizing it, too, I think, in our hu- 
man relations. I have been traveling around 
over the country seeing these training camps, and 
I find that when ten or twenty or thirty thousand 
boys are camped near a city, large or small, the 
city adopts them. There is an instantaneous and 
widespread process of affectionate adoption going 
on, so that men of my time of life, when they 
walk along the street and see a man in khaki, 
have an almost irresistible desire to say, "My 
sonr 

How beautiful that is, and how true it is ! For 
when, on some moonlight night, on the fields of 
France, some American boy's face is upturned, 
some boy who has made the grand and final sac- 
rifice in this cause, no passerby nor no imagina- 
tion that reaches him will be able to discern 
whether he came from a blacksmith's forge or a 
merchant's counter or a banker's counting room. 
He will simply be an American, and our affection 

[198] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

for him, our adoption of him, our pride in him, 
will be as undiscriminating. 

Now all of this, I think, tends to afford some 
consolation. It is one of the by-products of this 
war that is going to be of immense value to man- 
kind when it is over. I have already adverted to 
the association with other nations. I suppose 
every boy, when he is a boy and thinks of Heaven, 
looks forward to communion with the spirits of 
the great departed. Every generous soul desires 
contact with greatness, and now we are sending 
over to France unnumbered thousands of choice 
young Americans to associate with a great peo- 
ple, and with men who have responded to mag- 
nificent inspirations. 

When Joffre was in this country he was in my 
office one day for about an hour, and I was deeply 
impressed with his apparent imperturbable calm. 
He spoke hastily, as it seemed to me; all French 
seems hasty to me because I don't understand 
it. But he was calm, and after he had gone 
out I asked one of his staff officers who had 
been with him from the beginning of the German 
invasion of France whether he was always as un- 
troubled and calm as that, and how he had be- 
haved in the terribly disheartening and disastrous 
days before the Battle of the Marne. His aide 
gave me this picture of him : The old Marshal sat 
in his headquarters, and day after day dispatches 
came; every minute a dispatch, all of them dark 
and menacing. They were handed to him by the 

[199] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

young man who told me this story, announcing 
the German advance here, and the French re- 
treat there, and the capture of this city, and fi- 
nally the approach of the German army to Paris. 

And this Major told me that as each dispatch 
came in the old Marshal would shrug his shoul- 
ders and say, ''Oh, well — eh, bien !" until finally, 
under the accumulation of this intense anxiety, 
the last dispatch came, telling that the German 
army was in sight of Paris, their objective, the 
heart of the Marshal's nation. And in an instant 
his "Oh, wells," his *'Eh, biens," cam.e to an end. 
When this last dispatch came in he glanced at it 
for a moment, tossed it aside, and said, ''This is 
far enough" ; picked up a pencil and with his own 
hand wrote the message to the soldiers of France 
which ended with something like these words:. 
"The enemy must be permitted to advance not one 
step farther. The least that France expects of 
any of her sons is that he will die where he 
stands." 

And that began the Battle of the Marne, and 
from that day to this, France has realized her 
expectation in her children. 

And right alongside of them is that superb 
British army, no longer the despised little army, 
the contemptible little army, but Kitchener's 
army, the army of Great Britain and her colonies, 
gathered from over all the world. 

Off in the far-flung corners of the globe the 
same sort of progress is being made, until only 

[200] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

day before yesterday the poetic and romantic 
news came that Jerusalem was in the hands of 
AUenby, and the children of the civilization that 
sprang from thj.t country are now in possession 
of their holy places, and can walk untroubled by 
Saracen and Mohammedan as Richard Coeur de 
Lion wanted to walk in what was the promised 
land in years gone by. 

It is a wonderful story, the alignment of the 
nations which can truly be called civilized, against 
the ancient medievalism which survives in the 
heart of Europe. The hope of mankind, so often 
frustrated, apparently is now to be accomplished. 
It could not be done in Napoleon's time, in spite 
of the French Revolution, and its philosophy and 
its promise, because of what Danton called "The 
Allied Kings of Europe." It could not be done 
in 1848, because of the Metternichs and the Bis- 
marcks. It could not be done in 1870, because 
Hapsburg and Hohenzollern were still trium- 
phant. But out of the West, out of this youngest 
and latest and most hopeful of the nations of the 
earth, out of this young giant, fashioned from all 
the peoples, who originated and faithfully prac- 
ticed a new philosophy, messages of democracy 
have gone over and indoctrinated other peoples 
in other parts of the world. 

Now, in the fullness of time, this giant is 
grown, and joins hands with other peoples, who, 
though older, are yet the children of his spirit. 
We are partners to-day with great men of great 

[201]' 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

nations who have borne for three years heroically 
the brunt of this struggle. At the end of it, out 
of the noise and smoke of battle, there arises the 
vision of a new federation of nations, of a new 
fraternity of mankind — the sons and daughters 
of civilization joining hands to protect the sacred 
principles upon which the freedom of mankind 
rests. 

In and about our training camps new condi- 
tions have arisen. All sorts of modern, advanced 
ideas with regard to the amusement and enter- 
tainment and recreation of young men in order 
that they may be virile, strong, and high-minded, 
have been adopted, not because of any particular 
wisdom of any one man, but because of the 
unanimous judgment and demand of the Amer- 
ican people. And when our army goes abroad, 
it will be a knightly army, not an army of con- 
quest that expects to come home with chariots 
loaded up with material spoils, and prisoners 
chained to the wheels, but an army that is going 
over to live and die for the fine fruits of a high 
idealism and a purified national morality. 

And when we add the righteousness of our 
cause to the intensity and success of our prepara- 
tion, mobilizing the material and spiritual and 
scientific resources of our great people, and think 
of the character of our army, we see but one pos- 
sible conclusion to this. Its first step will be mili- 
tary victory on the field, but its last step, its great 
fruits, the victory which will enter New York 

[202] 



THE EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY 

Harbor some day written on the shields of our 
boys who will bring it to us, the victory that we 
will value most, will be a vindication in the sight 
of all men everywhere of the virtue of freedom, 
the vigor of civilization, of true civilization, the 
inviolable righteousness of international engage- 
ments and agreements — the fact that among na- 
tions, as among men, the wages of sin is death. 

My fellow-citizens, we are in a war with all its 
losses, material and human. There may be griefs 
in store for us of a personal kind, and we shall 
bear them with fortitude. But for mankind, and 
for us as a nation, there is joy in store; not only 
in the introduction of a new and higher era for 
the advance and effort of mankind, not only that 
men and women and children are to have a newer 
and larger liberty in the life that is to come, but 
that we Americans, having so greatly enjoyed 
under the favor of Providence these priceless pos- 
sessions, have been privileged to participate in 
making them a common asset for mankind. 



[203] 



THE NEW FREEDOM AND THE NEWER 
DEMOCRACY 

It won't do for us to embrace the hollow figure in which 
democracy was once a tenant and say, "This is De- 
mocracy." We must hatue an image to represent it which 
is suited to the environment in which the -figure is to 
play a part. 

National American Woman Suffrage Asso- 
ciation, PoLi's Theater, Washington, 
December 14, 191 7. 

DOES it seem unnatural to you that those of 
us who are especially charged with the re- 
sponsibilities of this great world war and our par- 
ticipation in it should be asking ourselves ques-r 
tions about its ultimate effect upon the world? In 
the struggle we are now facing, if the incalculable 
waste of human life and human effort — if the 
hopeless loss of life and destruction of capacity 
were not relieved by some hopeful and forward- 
looking promise, the burdens of this struggle 
would be quite insupportable for the human race. 
As a consequence, I think, in those moments 
when we are free from the burden and responsi- 
bility of an insistent and instant demand, most of 
us are seeking to penetrate the future, and see 
what this war means for the betterment of the 
race, at large, and in the future. I have often 

[204] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

asked myself, ''What does this war mean to wom- 
en?" And in asking that question, I always put 
the accent on "this" war; because woman's por- 
tion of most wars is a fairly obvious thing — it is 
a contribution of loss, a contribution of broken 
hearts, a contribution of sacrifice and a ministry 
of mercy. Except that her fight is inseparably 
bound up with that of the nation of which she is 
a member, it ordinarily has had no larger sig- 
nificance for her. But when I put the accent on 
this war, it seems to me that one of the large re- 
deeming hopes of the struggle begins to appear, 
because this is certainly the first war of its kind 
which has been waged for democracy. 

The President the other day made an illuminat- 
ing definition of democracy by first denying that 
it is a political philosophy and then, in his next 
breath, stating that it is a rule of action. Now 
the thing that I want to point out about democ- 
racy to-night is that it is not an accomplished 
thing to possess, but is a process of growth. It 
is a series, an endless series of advances and, ac- 
cepting the President's definition that democracy 
is a rule of conduct, it is always the rule which 
adapts the conduct of the individual to the best 
purpose achievable in the environment in which 
he is placed; so that, constantly, democracy and 
the obligations of democracy and its opportuni- 
ties are extending and changing with the environ- 
ment. 

It has been so long since I have had any oppor- 
[205] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

tunity to look even at the back of a book of his- 
tory that I hesitate to fortify that statement with 
any historical illustrations; and yet some very 
obvious illustrations do occur even to one who, 
like myself, has had little acquaintance with his- 
tory more recent than his college days. Democ- 
racy in ancient Greece was a rule by a very small 
and restricted privileged class, who among them- 
selves preserved some equality of political right 
and opportunity, but their rule was extended over 
a very large population which was either eco- 
nomically and socially inferior or absolutely en- 
slaved. 

Democracy in Rome was not much wider in its 
distribution of political rights. The first consti- 
tution, which was made under the French Revolu- 
tion, was a constitution with altogether illogical 
restrictions upon manhood suffrage. The very 
people who wrote the rights of man as the decla- 
ration of the principles upon which the French 
Revolution was justified, wrote in the next breath, 
in the laws by which they undertook to carry that 
declaration into effect, an illiberal system which 
restricted the right to vote and laid a property 
qualification upon it. 

And so, when our own tentative democracy, our 
democracy of 1776 and 1789^ was established — ■ 
accepting the President's definition and applying 
it — it was a rule of conduct adapted to the en- 
vironment of 1789. And when later we come 
to the present year or to recent years, it won't 

[206] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

do for us to embrace the hollow figure in which 
democracy was once a tenant and say "This is 
Democracy," but we must have an image to rep- 
resent it which is suited to the environment in 
which the figure is to play a part. We must have 
the democracy of 19 17, because the democracy 
of 1789 is not adapted to the environment of 1917. 

Now what are the underlying facts which have 
changed? Institutions and governments grow 
more complex as they progress, because of the 
necessity of their being constantly adapted to the 
needs which they are to meet. In 1789 we were 
largely a rural and agrarian population. The 
family was no less the unit of society than it is 
now, but the interests of the family were very 
much more narrowed. The intimacies of the 
family in the few interests they had were very 
much more close; the process of representation 
by a single member of a family was not in the 
slightest degree striking or shocking or curious 
to people of that time. More lived within their 
own homes. The walls of the home and the 
church were substantially the accepted perimeter 
within which their rights and activities were all 
contained. 

Then we embarked upon an enlargement of our 
activity. Our own civilization became more in- 
tense. We not only departed from the stage 
coach and the pack mule as modes of transporta- 
tion, and adopted the steam railroad and the 
electric motor, but we speeded up our intellectual 

[207] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

processes in the same ratio. We speeded up edu- 
cation and scattered it widespread over the land. 
We made all of the industrial and commercial 
processes of our people very much more intense 
and by the introduction of machinery we took 
away from industry and from commerce a very 
great deal of the highly specialized skill which 
made it necessary for a man to devote an entire 
lifetime to the pursuit of a single activity in order 
to become expert in it. At the same time we be- 
came a very much more congested population, 
and all of these things led to the advent of women 
in industry and in commerce, and to the introduc- 
tion of large numbers of girls and women into 
spheres of activity which were previously entirely 
restricted to men ; and as we began to be engaged 
in the same work, there began to be a unity of 
interest, began to be more and more of that in- 
dustrial society which has finally come to be 
recognized in the law. That is what always takes 
place. Government at its best is the surrender 
by each individual of only so much of his indi- 
vidual right and liberty as must necessarily be 
surrendered for the common good, which is 
deemed higher than the good of the individual. 
We surrender these rights very reluctantly. If 
there were but one man in the world, he would 
have all the rights there are — he would have to 
make no surrenders. But when we come to two 
men with two rights, we find that each must sur- 
render so much of his previously unrestrained lib- 

[208] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

erty as is necessary to make them get along 
together in the world which they both happen to 
inhabit. And if we go from two men to ten men, 
and to hundreds of men and to thousands and 
millions of men, we find a constant increase in 
the proportion of the previously unrestrained in- 
dividual right which must be surrendered in order 
that common good may come out of it and that 
society may be protected. 

So when we come to see society as we have it 
now, we find ourselves a congested population of 
men and women, with a tremendously increased 
number of common interests, each of us being re- 
quired to surrender more and more of our previ- 
ously unrestrained liberty, and freedom of action, 
in order that the common good may be repre- 
sented and protected. 

Now the result of that is that in 1789 it might 
well have been possible to have defined as a 
democracy a society in which the family was rep- 
resented by a single representative — a man; but 
in 191 7, society cannot speak of itself as a democ- 
racy unless it forgets its old environment, unless 
it remembers the change that has taken place. It 
cannot speak of itself as a democracy unless all 
the men and women who live under the adminis- 
tration of that government and those institutions, 
are recognized and represented in the Govern- 
ment. 

And so we speak of this war as being a war for 
democracy. Women are making sacrifices in 

[209] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

this war, just as the men are making sacrifices in 
it. The immense activities of the organized and 
unorganized women of America who are con- 
tributing to the strength of our nation as it is 
being expressed in this contest, are not susceptible 
of being withdrawn any more than the activities 
of the men. I have made no careful search of 
my own mind on the subject, but I think I am 
prepared to say that, if all the women in America 
were to stop to-night doing the things that they 
are doing, and making the sacrifices and con- 
tributions they are making toward the conduct of 
this war, we would have to withdraw from the 
war. We would at least have to withdraw until 
we could bring about the entire reorganization of 
our social and industrial structure. 

So that one of the demonstrations which this 
war is making, one of the conclusions it is bring- 
ing home, is that men and women are essentially 
partners in our industrial and commercial civil- 
ization, in any modern civilization, and that the 
democracy which we are struggling to establish 
— the only sort of democracy which will satisfy 
anybody's heart and mind when we emerge from 
this war, is one which recognizes the rights of all 
the persons in that society. 

Now that is a dreadfully unemotional sort of 
thing with which to try to satisfy oneself in a 
time like this. It seems an intangible sort of sat- 
isfaction, and yet I wonder whether it is not about 
as enduring as any satisfaction can possibly be. 

[210] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

When this war is over we will write down in 
books that at such and such a time there was a 
battle fought, and a victory won, that our adver- 
sary sent word to this, that or the other general 
that he desired to make peace, that they began to 
make parleys at that place, and that finally treaties 
were written which settled the rights of nations, 
and other things. They will put flags, the flags 
of our country, and of France and of Germany, 
of England and Italy and Austria, on the page 
that records that great triumph. The philoso- 
phers will talk about the defeat of Autocracy at 
the hands of Democracy. There is something 
infinitely romantic and poetic about that. I can- 
not imagine any picture addressing my imagina- 
tion with more appeal than that of the House 
of Hapsburg and the House of Hohenzollern 
coming out of the night, coming out of the Dark 
Ages, medieval figures still, and meeting here in 
the Twentieth Century the young, strong, in- 
comparable giant of the modern spirit. 

Poets will write about this struggle and his- 
torians will record it. Most of it will be un- 
doubtedly grouped around the surface indications 
of democracy, the rights of more people to par- 
ticipate in the government; but I suspect that 
the real factor in this contest, the real fundamen- 
tal element which is to go on and fructify in- 
definitely in the future, will be the demonstration 
of the fact that democracy itself is an eflfect, is a 
progress rather than a state of being, and that 

[211] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

tfiere will ever be new heights to which tHe human 
spirit may climb, more and more benefits to be se- 
cured for the human race, larger and larger lib- 
erties and opportunities, more and more far- 
reaching places within which the human spirit 
can perfect itself. 

This war is the culmination of a long history. 
Nobody can tell how long ago it began in the 
making. There is one of Shakespeare's plays — 
I confess I have forgotten which one- — in which 
I see the picture of a general on a field in a tent — 
it must have been Richard III — it was just before 
the battle that was to decide his fate, and it was 
night. And as his head sank over in sleep, while 
he was seeking rest for strength in the next day's 
conflict, there came trooping by him dream fig- 
ures of those whom he had done to death. I 
have no such personal feeling about the particu- 
lar representative of the HohenzoUern family 
who happens to be alive when the family history 
comes to the breaking point, as to make him 
represent the king within that tent; but Prussia 
is before that tent, asleep, and the figures 
that are trooping by are Silesia and Poland and 
Alsace-Lorraine, and all the territory that Prus- 
sia has racked and stolen and taken away from 
other people, and all the violence it has done 
in the world and all the recognizances it has 
failed to make of the validity of the simple cardi- 
nal rules of justice and truth in human conditions 
as applying to nations. All of these are trooping 

[212] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

by as dream figures in the troubled sleep of that 
nation which is now brought to the day of retri- 
bution. And as we look upon that nation 
lying at the door of her tent and reviewing her 
past, this war gives us a new lesson. It teaches 
us that some day we may have to sleep in front 
of the tent; as a nation there may come a 
critical hour in our national life when we 
will be called upon to review our past and see 
whether we are worthy to live, whether or not we 
ought to give place to something stronger and 
more virile, and more righteous than we; and if 
the figures that pass our tent door are denials of 
democracy, are refusals to recognize our environ- 
ment; if they are injustices to great groups of our 
fellow-citizens ; if they are arrogations and special 
privileges to particular groups of men or women, 
of either to the exclusion of the other ; if those are 
the figures that pass before the tent — then we may 
be very sure that the battle on the morrow will go 
to the stronger race. But if the figures that pass 
before that tent door are figures of a people who 
really do love democracy and progress, who at 
every step in their national career sought to read- 
just themselves to the environment in which they 
lived, — if they are figures representing recogni- 
tion of the rights of individuals to the highest 
fine development of which their capacities are sus- 
ceptible ; if the figures that troop by are justice, in 
the adequate and fundamental sense, and real 
recognition of the rights of others ; then we can 

[213] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

face the breaking of the morning and the onset of 
battle, just as we can face it now in the contest 
that is ahead of us, sure that it may bring some 
sacrifices — such is the quaHty of blessings in this 
world — but sure also that endurance and per- 
petuity must in the very nature of things and in 
the justice of nature, be awarded to those who 
are faithful to such ideals. 

So analyzing this war, we realize that it is giv- 
ing us of the Twentieth Century an opportunity 
to keep step with our age. Before this war be- 
gan. Democracy gave its name to a political party. 
And as I happen to be a member of that party, I 
like to think that party represents that policy ; but 
Democracy is more than the name of a political 
party now, and this war is teaching us to recog- 
nize that, and to see women's share in it. They 
have the opportunity to make the sacrifices ; they 
have the opportunity to help; they, like men, are 
spurred on by its superb inspirations. Like men 
they are discovering a new and latent and unsus- 
pected capacity in themselves for action and as- 
piration. The nation itself is discovering latent 
capacities and unsuspected superiorities. Nations 
are drawing closer together and discovering one 
another's inherent nobility. And so, when this 
war is over, and we begin the reconstruction of a 
shaken and shattered civilization,- after the pour- 
ing in of oil and the binding up of the wounds of 
the flesh are over, and we begin to try to bind 

[214] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

Up the spiritual wounds of mankind resulting 
from this struggle, we will then have become 
aware almost unwittingly — we will have become 
aware of the fact that the salvation of the world 
lies really in the thing we have been fighting for. 
This democracy that we speak of and follow, 
must not be some traditional and historical thing, 
something of official creed and stiff formalities, 
a declaration written in lofty high-sounding 
phrases; but what the President calls it — a rule 
of conduct by which each individual in the State 
(reserving to himself jealously all the freedoms 
and rights that can be reserved, yet gives up all 
that is necessary, in the name of humanity, in 
order that by the common effort of every one, the 
common good may be effected. 

If I had some subtle and instantaneous way of 
using efficiently all of the good will and willing- 
ness to help that there is in America, the world 
could not stand against her five minutes. Facing 
the fact that it takes some time to order the 
process by which so much willingness and good 
will can be used — that is the difficult part of this 
situation, and yet that is one of the prices that 
we pay for democracy. 

It is perfectly possible to have an ordered and 
regimented society in which each person will have 
in his pocket a card and upon that card directions 
as to how he is to act under all sorts and condi- 
tions of circumstances, and when a national 

[215] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

emergency arises to have the public authority tele- 
graph abroad, "Everybody act according to Rule 
13." It would be possible to fix by congressional 
enactment a particular breakfast hour for the hu- 
man race and prescribe their conduct for every 
five minutes of the rest of the day; and in certain 
forms of government that is a more or less popu- 
lar amusement. 

But one of the characteristics of democracy 
is that it does not proceed that way. It scatters 
its people; it allows them to go about here and 
there, seeking by individual inspiration and un- 
guided effort to find the avenue of their own 
highest opportunity and enjoyment. All are 
busy about their own concerns, and then, when 
the national emergency comes, there is no Rule 
13. Everybody has to ask somebody else, "Well, 
what are you going to do? What do you think I 
can do?" After a while these severely troubled 
waters do really come to a healing influence, and 
we find that though we seem to have been going 
in circles and apparently indulging in a good deal 
of futility, yet the thing we have been really doing 
is consulting about the mode of gathering the ag- 
gregate strength of the nation for the accom- 
plishment of our high-minded purposes. Men are 
doing it just as women are doing it. The or- 
ganizations of women in this country have been 
tremendously effective — they are growing daily 
more efTective. Throughout American life there 
is developing in industry, in commerce, in finance, 

[216] 



FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY 

among men and among women, in the philosophy 
of this conflict, in the moraUty of this conflict, in 
the hope of this conflict — there is developing a 
perfectly well-defined unity of fellow feeling, and 
the consequence is that when this war is over, we 
shall be more a nation in the best sense of that 
word than we have ever been before. 

Many of the old things that belong to the old 
order will have passed away with that order. 
The new date line of this central and pivotal 
event in the history of the human race will have 
made memories of a lot of things which have been 
prejudices heretofore, and we shall start out with 
one of the great fruits of this war, — a new knowl- 
edge of the progressive character of democracy 
and a new faith in the capacity of men and women 
to achieve the great promise which world democ- 
racy holds for the race. 



[217] 



THRICE-ARMED AMERICA 

The Army is merely the point of the sword; the 
handle, and the hand that wields the handle and the 
body that controls that hand, and the subsistence of that 
body, are all just as vitally indispensable to the effective 
use of that weapon as the point itself. 

Chautauqua Representatives, Washington, 

January 2, 1918. 

HAD I a message to bear to the American 
people, it would be one of pride and en- 
couragement at the splendid mobilization of the 
national power which has actually taken place in 
America. I think nothing has ever gone on in 
the world like the thing which has gone on in this 
country since we entered the European War. 
Diverting our industries from their peace-time 
occupation, turning our attention to the great 
task and the great opportunity which has been 
opened up to us, there has arisen among our peo- 
ple a unanimity of spirit and a common willing- 
ness to sacrifice ; a determination to see this great 
job through, which has simplified the task of 
those who have been more or less at the center 
and the direction of things, and has proved to 
us this great truth that it is not necessary for 

[218] 



THRICE-ARMED AMERICA 

people to doubt Democracy; that whenever 
Democracy has an emergency to meet, it has the 
inherent power to rise to that emergency and to 
exert itself in ways that are adequate to any 
attack which can be made upon it. 

The wholesome and happy feeling I derive 
from that is this : it gives us assurance to go on 
building America as we were building it — build- 
ing it as a democracy, putting the emphasis on 
liberty and freedom. We are now assured that 
in a country organized in this way, with love of 
freedom as its basic spirit, there is no weakening, 
there is no enfeeblement of the coordinative 
powers of the people. When the emergency 
comes, the power is there and it lends itself readily 
to coordination and to expression and to effec- 
tive use. 

Nothing is more valuable for the people of the 
United States, I think, th^n that they should 
have just grounds, as they have just grounds, for 
retaining their belief in the validity as well as in 
the beauty of democratic institutions. And our 
people are entitled to have that assurance because 
democratic though we are, we have effectively co- 
ordinated the strength of the nation. We have 
coordinated its financial strength, its industrial 
strength, its man power, and its moral strength, 
and dedicated them to a great heroic task in a way 
that no other country in history has done. 

I hope that you may bring the conviction to 
[219] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

your audiences that every man in America is 
interested in this war; that it is not the war of 
the people in Washington; it is not the war of 
the people in the army, — it is the war of every 
man in America, and the things which we 
deem true and beautiful in civilization, and which 
we are seeking to save by this great enterprise 
cannot be saved by the army alone, but they are 
to be saved by every man, woman and child old 
enough to think and willing to do his share. 

The army is merely the point of the sword. 
It is simply the striking point of the national 
strength ; but the handle and the hand that wields 
the handle, and the body that controls that hand 
and the subsistence of that body are all just as 
vital and indispensable to the effective use of that 
weapon as the point itself. 

It is the heightened sense of individual respon- 
sibility and individual participation in this thing 
— it is the dignity of the individual in the midst 
of this vast enterprise that I would like to have 
you bring to your audiences so that they can 
actually feel and have a realizing sense of it, be- 
cause if every American who looks to his coun- 
try's interest in this hour, can be made to feel that 
intimate sense of personal relationship to it; that 
he is one with it; that his strength is being felt 
in the push ; that his spiritual contribution is on 
the forward moving side, I am quite sure that it 
will make the country stronger and will give the 

[220] 



THRICE-ARMED AMERICA 

people of the country a more wholesome attitude 
toward their own relation to the government. 

When this war is over, what we want to be 
able to do is to push ahead the work of recon- 
struction. Some one 'is going to be chosen to 
reconstruct the world. If the governments 
which come out of this war triumphant are peo- 
ples which have surrendered personal liberties, 
subordinated the individual to the State, given up 
the right of free speech and free thought; if 
those will be the governments which will seem 
most effective in this war, their model will 
have to be chosen for future reconstruction. But 
if the strongest force in this war is the vigor 
and effectiveness of the free people, then, when 
this war is over, that model will be chosen and 
people all over the world will select that model as 
the one on which to build the reconstruction of 
the world. 

In order to have America do its part in the re- 
construction, we want to have the feeling in this 
country when the war is over and the victory 
won, that the whole victory was not won by the 
soldiers alone. On the day when the victory is 
won and the peace is accomplished, I'd like to have 
everybody in the United States feel "I helped to 
bring that about." 

I'd like to have you tell the people of this coun- 
try that, as Napoleon said, in war morale, or 
moral force, is to brute force as three to one. The 
same man said that God was always on the side of 

[221] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the heaviest guns. Yet Napoleon, who to many 
minds is the typification of force, recognized the 
value of the spirit in war as being three times as 
great as the value of mere numerical strength. 

Now, if the people of the United States can 
acquire a realization that this great war is the 
greatest thing that we have been privileged or will 
be privileged to see and help in, and that the sac- 
rificial spirit which is necessary to sustain and 
carry it to a victorious conclusion is one not dis- 
colored by any sort of selfish advantage — if they 
can get this realization, then not only will we 
win the victory on the field, but we will win the 
victory after the field of battle, in the greater 
opportunities that will come to the race. 

Perhaps I can sum up. I'd like to have you tell 
the people, first, that their country has risen to 
this emergency; that it is meeting its responsi- 
bility; that it is realizing its opportunity; that 
the whole country, every part of it, is knit to- 
gether in a community of spirit and a community 
of effort which is bringing the great power of 
our unexhausted and perhaps inexhaustible re- 
sources to bear, for success. 

Second, that this isn't one man's war, or sev- 
eral men's war, or an army's war, but it is a war 
of all the people of the United States; and 

Third, that the dignity of this task is so great 
that every man's effort in it is an honor to him, 
and by an appreciation of his participation in 

[222] 



THRICE-ARMED AMERICA 

it, each man makes himself ready not only for 
better contribution now, but for a larger useful- 
ness in the reconstructive work which is to come 
after the war is over. 

I am very anxious to have the German govern- 
ment grasp what the people of America really 
think about this war, and what we are do- 
ing. Referring to Napoleon's maxim, I am 
anxious to have our people show the spirit, and 
feel the identity of interest in all this, which, by 
those subtle processes of intercommunication 
apparently now established between Germany 
and this country, will finally get to the govern- 
ing power of that empire, and which when 
translated to them will be this: there are no 
sectional divisions; there are no partisanships in 
America; there are no jealousies; there are no 
personal ambitions, but a people of one hundred 
million have actually risen in a mass and have 
devoted themselves to the job of putting an end 
to the unholy aggression of Germany upon the 
civilized world. 

If the German Emperor has any sort of notion 
that racial differences exist among us, or that 
religious differences may annoy us, or that sec- 
tional or partisan considerations may divide us, 
let us send him a message that that is not so. 
Let us send him word that we are just as much 
one, although one hundred million of us — that 
we are just as much one as though we were an 
individual, and that if he proposes to go on in 

[223] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

his attitude toward civilization he will have to 
count on us as a people who are willing to make 
the necessary sacrifices to bring the entire aggre- 
gate strength and power of this nation to bear 
against him. That would be a very good "three." 
The army will be the other "one." With a moral 
equipment of that kind, and the army, there can- 
not be any doubt about our success. 



[224] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

/ am not idealist enough to imagine that the time is at 
all near when we can dispetise with some admixture of 
force in the carrying out of police regulations, and I am 
heartily in accord with the belief that there should he 
segregation, isolation and quarantine. We must use the 
power which lanvs recently enacted by Congress have 
given us to diminish as far as we can by repressive meas- 
ures opportunities for vicious infections which would en- 
feeble the Army. 

Yet I am idealist enough to believe that we have al- 
ready passed many mile stones since we left the old con- 
ditions, and that our progress, our substantial and tre- 
mendous progress, is going to be along the line of healthy 
and wholesome and stimulating and strengthening sub- 
stitutes as counterbalances to temptation. 

National Social Hygiene Association, 
Washington, D. C, January 31, 1918. 

IN the office of the Chief of Police of Cleveland 
there is a picture about the size of that tapes- 
try on the wall facing me, done by a man with no 
knowledge of painting. He knew blue when he 
saw it, and he knew red when he saw it, 
and that is about all he did know about col- 
ors. It represents a little child crossing a 
street, and you can see in her face, rudely as the 
picture is done, the anxiety and timidity of a 

[225] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

little girl crossing a dangerous highway. And 
just alongside her is a great big humane-looking 
policeman who is helping her across. And you 
can see in her face, also, the anxiety about to de- 
part and her reliance upon the policeman as her 
guardian and protector. The man who painted 
that picture did not know very much about art, 
but he knew a very great deal about other things. 
He made his policeman big enough and strong 
enough to express the resolute will of society 
against persistent wrong-doing. And he made 
him also man enough to realize that the fears 
of a child were worth providing against and the 
confidence of the child worth fostering. 

I have thought of that picture very often. 
When I first came into the police court in Cleve- 
land it was as sad a place as I ever knew ; every 
morning, in addition to the hardened offenders, 
the habitues of the place, there was a flock of 
little children. I counted one morning seventeen 
children under fifteen years of age, in what was 
known as the "bull pen" of that prison, the city 
jail. And those children, — nine, ten, eleven, 
twelve years old, — were huddled into the ante- 
room of the courtroom with hardened offenders, 
men and women, and what they heard from the 
time they were imprisoned until they were 
brought into the court, perhaps to be sentenced 
back to jail with those same people, was enough 
to introduce a hardening influence into their lives. 
It made of that kind of effort at law enforce- 

[226] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

ment merely a perpetuation of the evil effects of 
accidental wrong-doing until the children became 
calloused into relentless habit. 

I am talking about the Dark Ages! All that 
happened so long ago that I have to search my 
recollection to find that such a thing could be 
true; and yet it was true, not in Cleveland alone 
but in cities throughout the United States gener- 
ally. But we began to advance, and one of the 
most conspicuous advances we made was the in- 
stitution of the juvenile court system, by which 
we substituted for the indiscriminate repressive 
method a parental system of discipline. We 
elected men to be juvenile judges, not because 
they did not know any law, nor because they did, 
but because the community which selected them 
judged them to have a sympathetic comprehen- 
sion of the point of view of children and of the 
processes which society ought to adopt to rescue 
children from their early mistakes. 

We have no scales by which we can measure 
social advances, but if there were some subtle 
process by which we could measure in miles the 
steps upward taken by society when the juvenile 
court was established as a separate method of 
dealing with juvenile offenders, I feel quite cer- 
tain that the mileage of that advance would com- 
pare favorably with any other social step we 
have taken in the last fifty years. 

Now the next contribution to that progress lay 
in the idea of recreation. In 1850, as I recall, 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

there were only two cities in the United States 
that had public parks. To-day there is no city in 
the United States which does not have public 
parks; there are no small towns in the United 
States which do not have public parks. And our 
first idea about the park was just outdoor air and 
opportunity, room for people to spread out and 
get away from the depressing effects of the con- 
gestion of modern civilization. Our factory sys- 
tem had brought about the congestion of indus- 
trial workers largely in city units in order that 
they might be handy to their places of employ- 
ment, and so we had outgrown the village unit 
idea with the village common and had brought 
ourselves into a civilization where we lived 
pressed in between hard brick walls and with 
nothing to walk on except stone streets. Indeed, 
it isn't a jest, it is a solemn and pathetic fact as 
told in Life some years ago, how some children 
went from New York to get a breath of fresh air 
on some fresh air mission's outing. When these 
children got outside of New York and into the 
open country, some of them were found sitting 
on the top rail of a fence, entirely disconsolate 
and with their eyes filled with tears. Asked 
why they were sitting there, instead of romp- 
ing about enjoying themselves, they said that 
there were no gutters to play in. We had 
brought their young life to a place where they 
had an invincible habit of the restrictions of city 
life and they couldn't be happy without them. 

[228] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

The child-life and the young life of our great 
cities was growing up unrecreated. 

So the park was developed, and after that the 
playground, and it was on a perfectly logical 
theory. Originally it was humanitarian, philan- 
thropical, and benevolent in its start ; some kindly 
man or some kindly woman who saw children 
playing in the street, where they were likely to 
be run over, would say, "Those children ought to 
have a back yard to play in, a little square, or 
a little common lot"; and that was provided for 
them. Then, as always happens, philanthropy 
became the pioneer of the functions of the State. 
The business of the philanthropist is to discover 
those things which society ought to do and, by 
demonstrating that they can be done, challenge 
the attention of society to its duties. So private 
philanthropy gave parks and playgrounds, put up 
swings and see-saws, and then the State or so- 
ciety came in, either the State government or the 
city government, and said : "This is our duty" ; 
and all over the United States now we have parks 
and playgrounds in every city and in every place 
where people are gathered in any numbers. 

And then the next step. It was realized that 
we could not reproduce in a city, by simply giving 
a piece of ground, those normal opportunities for 
play which occur in the sparsely settled country- 
side; that the artificiality of city life intruded 
itself into the playgrounds and that it was neces- 
sary to have supervised play in order that it 

[229] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

might be wholesome play; and so we began to 
train experts. And, private philanthropy, pio- 
neering again, set up schools for playground 
teachers, and private persons employed them and 
sent them to the parks to lead the children. And 
after a while society said, "We might as well cut 
down our bill for policemen, have only one-half 
as many policemen and hire some playground in- 
structors, leaders, play-masters, companions for 
these children." And so all over the United 
States now, we know of no city which does not 
have as a part of its city budget, recreational 
facilities and recreational instruction. 

I could recount other steps in this general di- 
rection. Those are the most important ones. 
Now this same impulse has been recognized in 
the Boy Scout movement, — the idea of getting 
the boy out of an unnatural environment and 
taking him back to the thing that it is in the na- 
ture of the boy to like doing, to make a woodsman 
of him, take him on hikes, and in the doing of 
these things to give him an opportunity to ac- 
quire those generosities of nature which belong 
to the natural man. 

The Y. M. C. A., started— I trust I offend 
no one by this statement about it, I think I am 
historically accurate — started originally, in ac- 
cordance with the temper of its time, as a more 
or less denominational or strictly religious move- 
ment with the idea of gathering young men in, 
in order that they might have formal religious 

[230] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

exercises, and then it seized — because it was akin 
to this fine new thing that was discovered — it 
seized upon the idea of recreation as a means of 
regenerating the spirit and body of young men. 
Now all over the United States are Y. M. C. A/s, 
having as one of their most active interests and 
enterprises, the athletic competitions, the gym- 
nasia, the outing clubs, all those things which 
tend to get young men together in wholesome and 
normal environment — taking them out into con- 
tact with nature and relieving them of the con- 
gestion of city life. 

I don't suppose anybody ever compiled in any 
comprehensive way the statistics as to the de- 
crease in criminality consequent upon the estab- 
lishment of recreational facilities. It has been 
studied in spots. In Chicago when they began 
the great playground movement, — they have very 
remarkable model playgrounds in Chicago, — they 
did keep an accurate account of juvenile criminal- 
ity in the neighborhoods where these places were 
established. And it showed almost instantly a 
progressive decrease. 

Finally we learned this lesson, these two les- 
sons. We learned that where there was a healthily 
conducted and adequate recreational opportunity, 
it was impossible for the old downward tendency 
of young men to continue; that in the presence of 
that opportunity the natural and spontaneous 
tendencies of young men asserted themselves. 
We learned this other thing; that the way to keep 

[231] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

young people from doing bad things is to give 
them an opportunity to do good things. There 
is an immense reassurance in that. It demon- 
strates to those who are watching it and follow- 
ing it that really the natural tendency of the 
young is toward the wholesome and the right 
and that it is the occasional and accidental young 
person, in an unfavorable environment and un- 
der the pressure of adverse circumstances, who 
acquires through such contacts the tendency 
downward. 

I can give you another illustration. We had 
in Cleveland the problem of the dance hall. No 
other problem that we had during the time I 
was connected with the city government seemed 
more refractory and difficult. The dance halls 
were located at the corner hall, frequently over 
saloons, sometimes over perfectly well-conducted 
saloons. Cleveland is a large city with a very 
large foreign-born population, and the habit of 
many of those groups of foreign peoples was to 
have a hall built in the middle of the neighbor- 
hood in which they lived, which they would call 
their national hall, naming it after their par- 
ticular nationality, so that they might meet there 
for social entertainments. These halls frequently 
had a dance hall annexed, or were used for danc- 
ing. But we found that the difficulty with the 
dance hall was that it opened too early and it 
closed too late, and it was commercialized by the 
desire of those who conducted the entertainments 

[232] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

to admit as many persons as possible, because the 
admission was the profit which went to the person 
who conducted the enterprise. And we found 
that the evil results of the dance halls were 
marked and difficult to combat. 

We started out with the repressive idea. First 
we put a police officer in each one, a kind of su- 
pervisor; then we put a chaperone in each one. 
Some improvement took place after each step. 
And finally it occurred to somebody to offer a 
wholesome substitute for the whole business and 
see how that would work. The price in the dance 
halls usually was five cents a dance, for a dance 
of three minutes. We took two very large pa- 
vilions out in public parks, closed them up so 
that they would be comfortable in winter time 
and opened dances conducted by the city and 
chaperoned by carefully selected men and 
women. We opened them a little later than 
the ordinary dance hall, and we closed them 
just enough earlier than the ordinary dance hall 
to prevent anybody going from our dance to any- 
body else's dance — it was too late to go anywhere 
else when they left us; and we charged, instead 
of five cents for three minutes, three cents for 
five minutes. And everybody came to dance with 
us! As a consequence, those dance halls out in 
our public parks, with all of the fine inducement 
which a well-protected and well-cared- for city 
park affords, — flowers in flower beds, Lake Erie 
rolling off just in sight, good music, plenty of 

[233] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

light, discreet and pleasant persons about on ev- 
ery hand, — made the sort of social recreation 
which those young people really wanted and were 
looking for. 

These illustrations are somewhat scattered. I 
am going back rather hastily into a period of my 
life which I don't often get a chance to think of 
any more, and am selecting those high points 
in my own experience which remain with me as 
demonstrations of the theory to which I am 
deeply committed, and which is that one of the 
greatest elements in law enforcement and one of 
the soundest character-builders which we have 
yet discovered, is recreation for the young, recre- 
ation for the middle-aged, and recreation for the 
old. 

Now consider our Army. That is the thing, of 
course, that is in everybody's heart and mind at 
this minute. Here we have an army of large 
size. We have started to build it by getting 
these young officers into training camps ; and we 
called into those training camps the choicest 
young men of this country, who have been 
through the colleges and the high schools, where 
attention was given not only, under our modern 
practice, to the education of the mind, but to 
their recreation as well; where their minds were 
filled with useful information and their bodies 
were made lithe and active ; and where their social 
point of view was made sound by association 
under wholesome and stimulating conditions. We 

[234] 



EXPRESSION VERSUS SUPPRESSION 

called these young men into our training camps — 
and one of them was near enough to Washington 
to allow most of this audience to see the splendid 
spirit of the young men who attended these 
camps. 

Then we sent those fine young officers out, — 
selected right out of the body of our people, en- 
dowed with the best gifts that our wisest and 
latest method of dealing with young men can 
give — we sent them out to be the officers of the 
young men whom we brought from homes all 
over the country to form into this army. 

I have gone from camp to camp and talked 
with the commanding officers, and these com- 
manders tell me that the discipline of this army 
is almost automatic, and that the old problem of 
disciplining soldiers has almost ceased to exist 
as a matter of major concern and anxiety. We 
have learned that the best control in the world is 
self-control, and that the best inducement to self- 
control is the kind of education that gives the 
best that is in men normal opportunity to grow 
vigorous. 

I am not idealist enough to imagine that the 
time is at all near when we can dispense with 
some admixture of force in the enforcement of 
police regulations, and I am heartily in accord 
with the belief that there should be segregation 
and isolation and quarantine. We must use the 
power which laws recently enacted by Congress 
have given us to diminish as far as we can by re- 

[235] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

pressive measures, opportunities for vicious in- 
fections which would enfeeble the Army. Yet I 
am idealist enough to believe that we have already 
passed many milestones since we left the old 
conditions, and that our progress, our substantial 
and tremendous progress, is going to be along 
the line of healthy and wholesome and stimulat- 
ing and strengthening substitutes as counter- 
weights to temptation. 



[236] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

/ propose to speak of some of the work of the War 
Department, of some of its mistakes, and of some of its 
plans for the future. There is always between the begin- 
ning of preparation and the final demonstration of its 
success, a period of questioning. We look back over the 
past and realize that there have been delays and that 
there have been shortcomings, that there have been things^ 
zvhich might have been done better. In so great an enter- 
prise it is impossible for frankness not to find these 
things. But our effort is to learn from them, not to re- 
peat, to strengthen where there is need of it; to supple- 
ment where it is required; and, by bringing these two 
things together, our very best effort and the confidence 
of the country back of that effort, to make our enemies 
feel finally the strength that is really American. 

Before the Senate Military Affairs 
Committee, January 28, 1918. 

I PROPOSE to speak of some of the work of 
the War Department, of some of its mis- 
takes, and of some of its plans for the future. 
The country is entitled to know what this war is, 
what its problems are, and what steps have been 
taken to meet those problems. 

Also, I have a deep sense of obligation to the 
officers of the Army and to the civilians who have 
from the beginning of this difficulty labored in 
a way which certainly, in my experience, has 

[237] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

never been equaled for devotion, self-sacrifice, 
and zeal, v^ho have spent sleepless nights and tire- 
less days in an effort to bring up the organiza- 
tion of this great Army and its use in a military 
enterprise most rapidly and effectively. 

I have seen strong and grizzled men of the 
Army turn away from my desk to hide tears 
when they were asked to stay in this country and 
do organization work here instead of going to 
France where the glory of their profession lay; 
and yet I have never known one of them to hesi- 
tate for a second to obey the order, nor has there 
been any lack of quality in the work which any 
of them has done by reason of his natural ambi- 
tion to be on the field of battle rather than in an 
administrative task. Men of the largest experi- 
ence and of the greatest talent in business have 
been included in the great company of civilians 
who have come to Washington from all over the 
United States, laying down their private busi- 
ness, sometimes accepting salaries which office 
boys at other places enjoy, sometimes having no 
salary at all. They have put up with the inade- 
quate conditions which the city now affords be- 
cause of its congested condition, and have worked 
in season and out of season on this undertaking. 

It would be a tragical thing if this tremendous 
effort, this wholly unprecedented sacrifice made 
by men, were found to deserve the comment that 
it had failed. 

I have not the least doubt that such currency 
[£38] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

as that feeling has received is due in large part to 
the tremendous impatience of the American peo- 
ple to do this great thing greatly. Every one of 
you, and every one of us, wants to demonstrate 
the thing which he knows to be true; that our 
country is great and strong, and in a cause like 
this will hit like a man at the adversary which 
has attacked us. And always there is between 
the beginning of preparation and the final dem- 
onstration of its success a period of questioning, 
when everybody, you and I and everybody else, 
goes through searchings of heart to find out 
whether all has been done that could have been 
or that ought to have been done; whether any- 
thing remains that can be done. And we look back 
over the past and realize that there have been 
delays and that there have been shortcomings, 
that there have been things which might have 
been done better. In so great an enterprise it is 
impossible for frankness not to find these things. 

But our effort is to learn from them, not to 
repeat; to strengthen where there is need of 
it; to supplement where there needs supple- 
menting; and, by bringing two things together, 
our very best effort and the confidence of the 
country back of that effort, to make our enemies 
finally feel the strength that is really American. 

I have no bias in favor of individuals. The 
issue before us is far too large for any preju- 
dice or favoritism, and when I discuss, if I 
shall discuss individuals by name, or if I refer 

[239] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

to myself, I want it understood that the appear- 
ance of any one of us in the casualty list any 
morning is a negligible matter as contrasted with 
the success of this enterprise. I am not here 
either to defend individuals, including myself, 
or to deny delays, mistakes, shortcomings, or 
false starts; but I think I can say with confi- 
dence that where those things have appeared we 
have sought the remedy; that in many places we 
have applied the remedy. The largest purpose 
I have in being here is to urge what I do not need 
to urge, that your committee, that the Members 
of the Senate and the Members of the House, 
that every citizen in this country, official and un- 
official, from the highest to the lowest, should 
realize that this is their enterprise, not quite so 
much as it is mine in the sense of responsibility, 
but still essentially their enterprise, and to ask 
from you and from them every suggestion, every 
criticism, every constructive thought that may 
come to mind. I ask when shortcomings are 
pointed out to you, whether they be well founded 
or whether they be not well founded, that you 
will instantly convey them to me, so that by the 
processes which the Department has, I may 
search out where blame is to be attached, where 
remedies are to be applied, and where strengthen- 
ing and improvement of the organization is 
possible. 

Mr. Chairman, you made an address in the 
Senate. It was at the conclusion of an investi- 

[240] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

gation of two divisions of the War Department, 
the Ordnance and the Quartermaster Depart- 
ments. In that investigation some shortcomings 
had been brought to the attention of the 
committee — some delays. They fall readily un- 
der two or three heads. The delays were in the 
midst of very large and involved transactions, 
and yet, by reason of the effort of the committee 
to trace them to their ultimate cause and to get 
their proper leadings and bearings, they assumed 
a disproportionate aspect in relation to what has 
actually been going on in this war and in the War 
Department. And if I may venture, with very 
great respect to the chairman and to the com- 
mittee, to suggest it, it seemed to me at the time 
I read that speech that perhaps I would feel about 
it thus : That without the intention of the chair- 
man and without anybody's intention, its effect 
might be to cause the country to feel that the 
particular difficulties and delays referred to by 
the chairman were characteristic rather than ex- 
ceptional. I want therefore to address myself to 
those incidents which were pointed out by the 
chairman in his address to the Senate and see 
whether I can not, with his permission and with 
great deference to him and the committee, place 
them in a light which will show that, rather than 
being characteristic, they are instances of short- 
comings and only instances, and that the general 
thing to which they bear a relation is not to be 
inferred as characterized by those instances. 

[241] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

If I may say one personal word, I should like 
to say that for some reason, which I do not un- 
derstand, when I appeared before your committee 
in these hearings with the intention of being 
frank, weighed down, as I have been ever since I 
have been Secretary of War, by accumulating 
difficulties in that Department ( for I became Sec- 
retary of War on the night that Villa crossed the 
border and raided Columbus, and the Department 
has been an active department ever since, and 
there has been no hour thereafter when I have 
not felt that the responsibilities which rested upon 
me were of the very gravest kind and when I 
have not wondered constantly where I might find 
the strength to meet those responsibilities), yet 
for some reason, with that sense of my duty 
and my task, and with the utmost desire to aid 
this committee to develop all that it wanted to 
know and all that there was, I seem yet to have 
left, at least upon the minds of some members of 
the committee, a feeling that I was fencing in or- 
der to defend the actions of my subordinates when 
that was not my intention. 

I have brought down here to-day, Mr. Chair- 
man, no hurriedly gathered data with regard to 
divisions of the War Department and their activ- 
ities, which you have not as yet inquired into. I 
am here, if I can, to make a compendious state- 
ment of the whole situation, and if there be, as 
doubtless there will be and ought to be, other 

[242] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

phases of the War Department's work which 
your committee desires to go into, I trust you will 
go into them thoroughly, and when you have de- 
tected any shortcoming or defect, I need not tell 
you that if you bring it to my attention I will do 
all I can, and that speedily and without fear or 
favor of person, to correct, adjust, and improve it. 
The chairman of the committee read to the 
Senate two letters dealing with instances of 
neglect of the dead. They are pathetic letters. 
They arouse every instinct of resentment and 
indignation that a man can have. I had not seen 
those letters before. At once, upon hearing of 
them, I wrote to the chairman of the committee 
and asked for the names of the writers of those 
letters and the camps in which those incidents 
were reported to have taken place. I wanted, 
and I want now, to follow those through to the 
very end to find out who was guilty of this inhu- 
man treatment, to find out who was responsible 
for the conditions complained of there, in order 
that I may punish those who are guilty. The 
chairman has felt that those letters came to him 
in a confidential way and has suggested that he 
will endeavor to have himself relieved from 
that confidence so that I can ultimately get those 
names and redress the wrong. Those are two in- 
stances. I have had others. I have not had 
those two, but it may interest the committee to 
know that with more than a million men in arms 

1243] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

in this country, with great hospital establishments 
in all these camps, with hospitals established in 
many camps other than those which are directly 
devoted to the National Army, the National 
Guard, and the Regular Army, the number of 
complaints has been relatively small, perhaps 
some dozen and a half. In each instance when 
the complaint came, if it dealt with a question of 
shortage of supplies, it has been referred to the 
Surgeon General of the Army in order that in- 
stant corrective steps might be taken, but where 
it involved a breakdown in the human element; 
where it involved some man who was intrusted 
with responsibility as to the life and welfare and 
safe custody of another individual; the remedy 
has been always to refer it to the Inspector Gen- 
eral of the Army for immediate investigation, 
with the recommendation as to a course of action 
to be taken which would not only be corrective, 
but punitive where fault lay. 

I have before me here the report of the In- 
spector General on the cases with which he has 
had to deal. Many of them show that com- 
plaints which, at the outset, looked serious, were 
not in fact serious. Some of them show that 
the situation was serious, and remedies and 
courses of discipline are suggested. I have, for 
instance, a case somewhat similar to the one 
which the chairman had, the report of the ship- 
ping home of a body of a soldier unclothed. In 

[244] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

this case the soldier was killed at the Toronto 
Flying Field, his clothing was removed, his body 
was wrapped in a winding sheet, and it was re- 
ceived at the home of his parents thus unclothed. 
Immediate inquiry was made and it was discov- 
ered that that flying unit was under the control 
of a major of the Royal Flying Corps of the 
British army; that he followed the British cus- 
tom of removing the clothes of the deceased and 
returning them in a separate parcel. The under- 
taker there employed to deal with this body dealt 
with it as the English and the Canadians are ac- 
customed to do. Immediate instructions were is- 
sued that there should be an American officer at 
that camp and that the American practice should 
prevail should such a catastrophe happen again. 
I have here a case of neglect of a patient, not 
leading to a fatal result, at Camp Wheeler. The 
Inspector General investigated it in a judicial 
manner and came to the conclusion that the condi- 
tions did not actually justify the complaint, but 
that in the bitterness of her distress the wife of 
this soldier felt that something more might have 
been done if she could have had her soldier home 
with her. In the judgment of the Inspector 
General her complaints were based upon that sort 
of distressed imagination, with which we are all 
familiar. No further remedy in that particular 
case was suggested than that care and consid- 
eration should be had in dealing with the rela- 
tives. 

[2.45] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

The first case of all which came to my personal 
attention came from Plattsburg, where a com- 
plaint was made of the mistreatment of a soldier 
by a surgeon. I sent immediately for the record, 
I examined it personally, and I came to the con- 
clusion that that particular officer, a man called 
in from civil life when the emergency arose and 
the rapid expansion of the medical corps required 
it, had failed to understand his responsibility, 
and I therefore dismissed him from the Army. 

There are few cases, however; they amount 
perhaps to a dozen or so altogether, and there are 
no others of a graver nature than those I have 
instanced, no others differing in character from 
those that I have cited. The whole record, of 
course, is at the disposal of the committee, if it 
desires it. 

In order that you may realize, Mr. Chairman, 
that I am trying to be thorough in this matter, 
I will say that there are still in the hands of the 
Inspector General nine cases which are being in- 
vestigated ; three allege general bad conditions in 
hospital service; two, inefficient medical treat- 
ment; another complaint is as to careless prepa- 
ration for burial; two are complaints of neglect 
by surgeons, and the last one is a simulation of ill- 
ness with the connivance of a surgeon. I men- 
tion these, not because they are as yet demon- 
strated to be true, but because they are complaints 
that have come to the department and have been 

[MG] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

put into the hands of that officer of the army who, 
by reason of the fact that he bears no relation to 
any other branch or bureau of the service, is in- 
trusted with the investigation of every complaint 
of this character. They are now being investi- 
gated by men trained for such work for the pur- 
pose of report and recommendation. 

There are two cases which illustrate, in my 
judgment, the attitude of the department on this 
subject. The first is that of a lieutenant, 
charged with neglect of patients at the base hos- 
pital at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana. He was 
court-martialed and sentenced to be dismissed 
from the service. The other case is that of an- 
other lieutenant, charged with neglect of pa- 
tients, court-martialed, and sentenced to be dis- 
missed from the Army. Their cases present sub- 
stantially the same facts. These medical officers 
were in their hospitals ; in one case, an ambulance 
drove up and a man was brought in claiming to 
be sick. The doctor made a hasty examination, 
looked at him, felt his pulse, or something of that 
kind, and ordered him back, saying that he was 
not sick. In other words, the doctor did not do 
the things he ought to have done; he did not ex- 
amine the patient and diagnose his difficulty in 
either of these cases, and the result was that in 
both of them severe illness developed, and death 
resulted. 

When those cases came to me, I had them re- 
[247] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

viewed by the Judge Advocate General to see 
what further could be done. A court-martial 
organized in accordance with the laws of the 
army and of the land had sat upon these cases 
and apportioned the punishment as dismissal 
from the army. But when the Judge Advocate 
General reviewed it for me he came to the con- 
clusion that that sort of neglect went much deeper, 
and recommended that both of those cases be sent 
back to the court-martial which had tried them, 
and that such imprisonment as could be added 
under the statutes of this country for that kind 
of neglect should be added to the penalty of dis- 
missal. 

As the letters I wrote on the subject will cover 
the details of the cases accurately, I therefore 
file and put into the record two letters, written 
respectively on the 8th and 9th of January, in 
which the action taken was the firm action of the 
Department, turning its face against callous dis- 
regard of the interests of soldiers. I want the 
country to know that, though we have had to take 
doctors out of civil life, because the number of 
doctors in this country trained in hospital man- 
agement and in group treatment of cases is lim- 
ited, the lives and the welfare and the illnesses of 
these soldiers are a responsibility which I will not 
permit to be dodged or handled in any cavalier 
fashion, and the policy of the department is one 
of punishment where guilt is involved. 

[248] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

In addition to this, Mr. Chairman, I may per- 
haps be permitted to say a word or two about 
what has been done in this matter by the War 
Department through the Surgeon General's office. 
When illness broke out in the camps I sent the 
Surgeon General in person to inspect conditions, 
and when he made his reports — the reports came 
to me involving criticism of various kinds as to 
congestion, and other causes of illness — I handed 
them in person to the newspapers. I thought it 
important that the country should know exactly 
the conditions and exactly the causes, for two rea- 
sons : In the first place I wanted no concealment, 
and in the second place, I wanted the help of the 
country in correcting the situation. 

In addition to that I wrote a memorandum to 
the Chief of Staff, that, in my judgment, the 
Surgeon General's Office ought to organize a 
system of continuous and constant inspection, for 
while there is a medical officer representing the 
Surgeon General's Office in every one of these 
camps, and while the commanding general in 
each of these camps is chargeable with responsi- 
bility for general conditions in his camp, I wanted 
to make this additional provision, that the Sur- 
geon General's Office itself would organize a con- 
tinuing system of inspection from day to day 
of these conditions. I instructed the Inspector 
General, who has inspectors going from camp to 
camp, that he should especially charge his men 
to examine into and report upon conditions in 

[249] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

the hospitals. Finally, I telegraphed to a very 
great hospital expert, Dr. John A, Hornsby^ — 
I did not know at the time that he was in the 
medical service of the Army but I happened to 
have had some previous contact with him when I 
was superintending the building of a city hospital 
in Cleveland, and learned at that time of his great 
experience in all matters of hospital management 
and construction — I telegraphed him to come to 
Washington in order that I might select him 
as my personal inspector to go, without rela- 
tion to any other part of the War Department, 
from camp to camp and hospital to hospital and 
make directly to me recommendations with re- 
gard to necessary improvements. 

When Dr. Hornsby came to Washington he 
came in a uniform, showing that the Surgeon 
General's Office had already drafted his talents 
and had already assigned him to the task which 
I intended he should perform, and it happens 
that I have here in my hand at this moment a 
telegram from Major Hornsby with regard to the 
conditions at Camp Pike, one of the camps which 
has been under comment. 

The telegram is as follows: 

"Camp Pike, Ark., Jan. 23, 19 18 
"Surge:on Ge^nkraIv Army, 

"Mills Building, Washington, D. C. : 
"Conditions at Camp Pike greatly improved. 
[250] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

Morbidity lower, types milder. Ample accom- 
modations for all sick. Convalescents and mild 
cases housed well in unoccupied barracks. Roots 
(that is, Camp Logan H. Roots) has taken 200 
cases and will be ready for 500 at once. No 
pressing need now. Leave here for Washington 
Thursday night to report unless otherwise or- 
dered. Address care Col. Thornburg. 

"(Signed) John A. Hornsby." 

I shall not, Mr. Chairman, read individual 
testimony, although I have a great number of let- 
ters and messages from men who have gone to 
hospitals and found the conditions good, for the 
reason that that is what conditions ought to be; 
and it adds nothing to the case to say that this 
man or this woman, this father or this mother, 
has gone to a hospital and found a boy well cared 
for ; that is what ought to be the universal rule. 
And yet I have a letter this morning, which I re- 
ceived yesterday, and which I think I will read 
into the record, because it is from a woman of 
national fame; a woman who, for the last four 
months, has gone from camp to camp in the 
United States writing about them, and printing 
her observations in public magazines and week- 
lies; who has done me the favor and honor to 
come a number of times to me personally to re- 
port upon these things she has seen. It is a let- 
ter from Mary Roberts Rinehart. As a matter 

[251] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

of fact I gave Mrs. Rinehart, as I now recall it, a 
letter which would admit her into any camp and 
enable her to inspect it. 

Mrs. Rinehart's letter is as follows: 

New York, January 26, 1918. 
"To the Honorable Newton D. Baker, 

"Secretary, Department of War, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 
"My Dmr Mr. SiiCRE^TARY: 

"I have just been reading that tragic letter 
from an unknown father read by Senator Cham- 
berlain during the present Senatorial investiga- 
tion. Its sincerity can not be questioned. As a 
mother, and as the mother of a soldier, I feel, as 
every one must, the deepest grief and sympathy 
with the parents of that dead boy. 

"Like every other mother in the country, I 
want these cases known. I want to be assured 
that they will be known. I want drastic punish- 
ment applied to any man, of no matter what 
rank, who is found guilty of negligence in the 
care, physical or moral, of our boys. And I 
want immediate remedy of conditions that re- 
quire remedy. 

"But I do feel that some step should be taken 
to reassure our women just now. It is only fair 
to them. It is cruel to allow every mother in 
the country to judge the medical care that will 
be given to her boy while in the service, because 

[252] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

here and there, in the chaos of our readjustment, 
men have been given responsibilities they are un- 
able or unwilling to fulfill. That we have such 
men is more than a national misfortune. That 
they have been placed in positions of trust is a 
national calamity. But the mothers of the 
country should know in fairness to themselves 
that the number of such inefficients is small. We 
will not rest, we women, until they have all been 
removed. But that, I know, will be at once. It 
must be at once. 

"I have a son in an army cantonment. He 
enlisted as a private. He would receive, if he 
became ill, exactly the same treatment as any 
other enlisted men in our new army. And I 
should have not only no hesitation in placing him 
in the cantonment hospital, but I should do it 
with absolute confidence. As a matter of fact 
he has already spent a few days there with an 
infected knee, and received the best of care. 

"I know something about hospitals. I took 
a nurse's training as a girl. I married a member 
of my hospital staff, and I have been for many 
years constantly in touch with hospitals. Dur- 
ing the first year of the war I visited the hospi- 
tals of France and England. Since we went 
into the war I have, with the avowed intention of 
seeing, for the women of America, that our boys 
are to be well cared for in every possible way, 
visited many training camps and camp hospitals. 

• [253] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

"There are conditions to be remedied. As I 
reported to you very recently, the failure of sup- 
plies has been a serious matter. There are not 
enough women nurses. The quarters of both 
nurses and doctors must be enlarged in many 
cases. The percentage of serious illness has been 
low in the cantonments — I am not speaking of 
the camps — but the percentage of mild conta- 
gions, which always occur when men are brought 
together in the mass, and of heavy colds and 
bronchitis, has been high. The result of sending 
men with heavy colds for a few days into the 
hospital has resulted in rather higher figures than 
the seriousness of the situation would otherwise 
justify. 

"Of cruelty and indifference I have found noth- 
ing. On the contrary, I have found the medical 
staffs of the hospitals both efficient and humane. 
When it is remembered that the medical men 
of these National Army hospitals are volunteers, 
who have cheerfully relinquished the result of 
years of labor to give their services to the coun- 
try, that they are of the best we have, as all vol- 
unteers are, that they are willingly undergoing 
deprivation and hardship to take care of our 
boys, it is wrong that the country at large should 
so misjudge them. The best specialists of the 
country have placed themselves at the disposal 
of the Army Medical Department, and ninety- 
nine out of a hundred men in the drafted army 

[254] 



WHAT WE HAVE BONE TO MAKE WAR 

are receiving better care than they could afford, 
under the best circumstances, to receive at home. 

"Nursing is on the same high plane. Again we 
find volunteers, highly skilled and carefully 
trained women, who have taken the small pay 
and the discomforts of army life that they may 
serve where they are most needed. 

"Wards are large and airy. Beds are comfort- 
able. I have found exquisite cleanliness every- 
where. Moreover, I have found cheerfulness. 
Food is good and plentiful. I have examined 
storerooms and kitchens, and watched the diets 
being served under the direction of a woman 
dietitian. 

"I do not like the orderly system. There should 
be more trained nurses. At present the wards 
where there are no serious cases are managed 
by a ward-master, an enlisted man. And with 
the best intention in the world, he is not always 
efficient. The lack of nurses is a serious one, and 
could be remedied probably by an appeal to nurses 
to volunteer. But here again is the serious ques- 
tion of the ill at home, the same which faces 
the medical profession and the civilian hospitals. 

"One hospital I know well. It is typical of 
other cantonment hospitals, it is under the same 
Army Medical Department direction as the oth- 
ers, and it is only right to assume that conditions 
there are representative. The same rules govern 
all these hospitals. The same sums are spent 

[255] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

on them. The same system is followed. The 
food is the same, the supplies, the medical staff, 
the nurses. 

"And I have never seen a better war hospital 
than the one at Camp Sherman. I will go 
further, and say that in its operating rooms, its 
X-ray department, its eye and ear department, 
its nose and throat department, its dental depart- 
ment, in short, in its facilities for caring for 
every emergency and every weakness it will bear 
comparison with any civilian hospital. 

''And what is true of the base hospital at Camp 
Sherman is true of the others. 

"I have watched the development of the war 
hospital system from the beginning, when I saw 
it first on paper in the office of the Surgeon Gen- 
eral up to two weeks ago. I watched because it 
was a vital matter to me. I had a husband and 
a son in the service. I am like the other women 
of this country. I would be content with noth- 
ing less than the best. And I feel that we are 
on the way to the best. 

"It has not come yet, although at the present 
moment, I would willingly trust any member of 
my family, in such emergency, in any one of 
our base hospitals. We need more supplies, we 
need more nurses and enlarged quarters for 
them. Sixty or even eighty nurses, divided 
into shifts of eight hours each, is totally insuffi- 
cient for a thousand men. We even need more 

[256] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

physicians and surgeons. Although the staffs 
are very large, the medical department in each 
hospital is working to its maximum. 

"But what we need, as a nation, is something 
more than this. We need knowledge and reas- 
surance. There is no need in this country for 
discontented resignation. I would suggest that 
a committee of representative and unprejudiced 
citizens from the nearest city visit each of these 
base hospitals and thoroughly inspect it. And 
that they publish in their local papers the exact 
results of their investigations. Let them go 
alone, to talk with the patients, the nurses, the 
doctors, the ward masters. And let them tell 
exactly what they find. 

"The women of the country must know the 
facts. They have the right to know them. It 
is not fair to let them believe, as many of them 
now do, that the great and humane American 
people is not caring for the men who are to fight 
to save them. We are preparing against the 
inevitable losses of war. It is not fair to let 
any of us believe that there is useless death, 
and we are wasting lives we would die to save. 

"And it is not true. 
"Faithfully, yours, 
"(Signed) Mary Robe:rts Rine^hart." 

There is no suggestion of remedy in that letter 
which does not have my instant approval. In 
addition to all the things which Mrs. Rinehart 

[257] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

suggests — and few are novel — are a number 
which I have already described to you as being 
done. Let me point out to the committee that, 
from the very beginning of this war the heads of 
the medical profession, the very masters of that 
profession, have been in constant contact with the 
Surgeon General. He has formed around him 
a staff the like of which probably does not exist 
on the face of the earth, for building hospitals, 
devising an organization, and supervising its per- 
fection. One must consider that the average doc- 
tor, whose attention has been devoted to the treat- 
ment of individual cases, under home conditions, 
under the necessities of this situation has been 
thrown into a great organization where he is 
compelled to deal with hospital conditions and 
groups of men and sanitation, all on a large scale. 
While it may be, and is, deeply to be regretted 
that there should even be the necessity of im- 
provement, yet the direction of this great medical 
staff of men, the zeal and loyalty and patriotism 
and efficiency of the medical profession are all at 
work rapidly bettering it and the improvement 
already wrought is very great. 

We are not alone, Mr. Chairman. Our coun- 
try is not alone in meeting with these difficulties. 
No army was ever assembled, nor can any be, 
which does not bring men together who thereto- 
fore have been exposed to communicable diseases, 
to which they are not immune. The most which 
can be done is to meet these conditions with every 

[258] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

device and suggestion which science and care can 
devise. That, in my frank judgment, is the aim 
of the Surgeon General, and in the doing of it 
he has the unqualified support, and he knows it, 
of every officer in the War Department from the 
Secretary down. 

Mr. Chairman, the second set of difficulties 
which you discussed with regard to the War De- 
partment were those affecting the supply of ord- 
nance. In my previous hearing before the com- 
mittee we went into that with great fullness. 
Clearly there are things about the supply of mu- 
nitions of war about which men's minds may 
differ. Not merely the relative excellence of cer- 
tain weapons, but the extent to which speed of 
procurement should be sacrificed for excellence of 
performance when procured, are questions of 
judgment, and their solution lies in the best in- 
structed advice one can secure. 

The first question of that kind which arose 
affected the selection of a rifle for the army, 
one involving the caliber of the rifle. The situ- 
ation was, that the English were using a rifle 
with a rimmed cartridge of one caliber, and the 
French were using a rifle with a rimmed cart- 
ridge of another caliber. We, in America, had, 
admittedly, the best rifle so far developed in any 
military service, the Springfield, using a rimless 
cartridge, and we had in stock of those weapons 
something like 600,000 — in stock and in the 

[259] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

hands of troops. This was early in the spring, 
although my recollection does not permit me to 
fix a definite date. The question had been in- 
vestigated prior to that time, in order that there 
might be a summary view of the possibilities of 
rapid procurement of various types of rifles. 
Finally the choice of a weapon was decided in 
my office, as nearly as my recollection holds, at 
about 1 1 o'clock at night, and there were present 
in that conference. General Crozier, the Chief of 
Ordnance; General Scott, the Chief of Staff; Gen- 
eral Bliss, the Assistant Chief of Staff; General 
Kuhn, the Chief of the Army War College; one 
or two other officei-s associated with the War 
College ; the Ordnance Department experts on the 
subject of rifles ; and General Pershing. 

At that time General Pershing had been se- 
lected as the commander-in-chief of our forces 
ultimately to be dispatched to France, and as he 
was to command the Army and was to use the 
forces, it seemed an especially fortunate circum- 
stance that he should be in Washington and able 
to participate in that conference. 

We did not know then, as I shall illustrate 
a little later to the committee, whether our Army 
was to fight with the French or with the Eng- 
lish. The mode of our military operations was 
not determined. The excellence of our weapon 
was so well known that just before the outbreak 
of this war, the British Government had decided 
to remodel its weapon and rearm its army, and 

[260] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

they were on the point of manufacturing a modifi- 
cation of their own Enfield rifle, which would use 
a rimless cartridge, and thus obviate the possibil- 
ity of jamming in the weapon, making it a better 
weapon. The sudden outbreak of the war com- 
pelled immediate equipment supplementing that 
which they had, and, fearing the confusion of us- 
ing a new weapon in conjunction with their old 
weapon, and trying, pari passu, to rearm their 
army, they decided to adhere to their Enfield rifle 

That conference considered every aspect of this 
question, and it was finally decided to use our 
own Springfield rifle, and to procure a modifica- 
tion of the Enfield which would allow it to be 
chambered for American ammunition, in order 
to get the advantage of the large and organized 
manufacturing facilities already built up in this 
country for the production of the Enfield. That 
decision, made that night, had the unanimous 
concurrence of every person in the conference. 
The Master of Ordnance and Production, the 
Chief of the Army War College, with his techni- 
cal advisers and experts, the Chief of Stafif and 
his assistants, and the Commanding General of 
the expeditionary forces, whose army and its use- 
fulness were at stake, were present. 

When we undertook to remodel the Enfield 
rifle, it was discovered, that although there were 
three plants in this country manufacturing it, the 
bolt from one factory would not fit the rifle from 
another factory. Instantly the question arose of 

[261] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

procuring interchangeability in the rifles pro- 
duced. 

At the outset it was thought that some eight 
or nine interchangeable parts would be enough. 
Later it seemed advisable to increase that num- 
ber. 

It was decided that a larger degree of inter- 
changeability should be required, in order that 
when these rifles got to France and were used 
under battle conditions, if a man found himself 
with a defective weapon, and alongside him was 
another defective weapon, he could, if the emer- 
gency required it, take out of one defective wea- 
pon a perfect part and replace the defective part 
in his own weapon, and be equipped ; in order in 
short to enable us to repair rapidly rifles rendered 
inefficient in service, so that a constant supply of 
these weapons will be ready at the front. 

There was some delay in designing with the 
particularity necessary — tolerances of a thou- 
sandth of an inch in some instances — specifica- 
tions for this remodeled Enfield, and that delay 
led to this result : That when our troops actually 
were assembled in the camps it was some time 
before they were fully armed with rifles. At the 
outset they had very few rifles. There was a dis- 
tribution of Krags and obsolescent weapons, in 
order that they might drill with them, but it was 
some time before they were adequately supplied 
with the remodeled Enfield rifle. 

That was foreseen. Gen. Leonard Wood came 
[262] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

to my office — I have forgotten when, but it was 
early — and suggested to me the advisability of 
instantly calling out a larger army. I said, "But, 
General, we have not the clothes and we have not 
the weapons for them." He said, "I know that, 
Mr. Secretary, but they need many things, before 
they need the rifles. They need to learn to live 
together, get used to camp conditions, they need 
the elemental discipline of camp life. They need 
to be taught to keep step, they need to know the 
subordinations of the Army, and it will take some 
time to give them that preliminary instruction." 
He pointed out to me that in England the so- 
called Kitchener army drilled for months, as he 
said, in their civilian clothes, with top hats and 
using a stick for arms. I said to him, "General, 
I agree with you that it is important to have our 
army equipped rapidly so that a prolonged period 
of training may be given to them ; but we will call 
out first the Regular Army and then we will call 
out the National Guard, building it up to war 
strength. But the draft army will have an addi- 
tional period of training in the field by reason of 
the fact that the army can not be shipped abroad 
in bulk, suddenly." It was necessary to attempt 
to forecast the amount of time needed for train- 
ing, and it was deemed wise to put the men in the 
camps in order that they might learn this matter 
of camp discipline, camp sanitation, the elements 
and essentials of the soldiers' life a little in ad- 
vance of their being fully tried with arms. 

[263] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

I have here a statement of the rifles which were 
supplied to the camps at the outset. At the be- 
ginning there were Krags in the cantonments. 
Senator Chamberlain in his speech to the Senate 
speaks of the weapons in the possession of the 
Department at that time as a motley collection — 
and I have no feeling about the phrase. The fact 
is that what we had was about 600,000 Spring- 
fields and something over 100,000 Krags. 
Also this is true: That in the greatest mili- 
tary establishment in the world, in the Ger- 
man army, when they call out raw recruits they 
give them an obsolete rifle as a practice rifle until 
the men learn to take care of it, before a service 
rifle is actually put in their hands. And so as a 
mere drilling and training weapon the Krag was 
not an improper weapon for them to have. 

I do not undertake to say, gentlemen, that that 
question was decided infallibly. It might have 
been better to have bought English Enfields 
enough to put one in the hands of every man. 
But it was decided thoughtfully, and it was de- 
cided considerately and conscientiously, and now 
the result is that every man in this country who 
is intended to carry a rifle in any of our military 
camps, has a rifle, and it is a better rifle than 
he would have had if we had adopted any one of 
the types existing at the time. 

And this additional thing is true, that although 
we have transported soldiers to Europe much 
more rapidly than it was originally imagined we 

[264] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

either would or could, every soldier who has gone 
to Europe has had a modern, excellent rifle, and 
he has had it long enough before going into ac- 
tion with it to learn how to use it, to practice 
with it either there or here. The same observa- 
tion is true of every soldier who will go to Europe. 

May I say now a word about machine guns ? 

The machine gun, of course, is a highly tech- 
nical weapon. It is in the record of testimony 
before your committee that up to April of 19 17 
no Lewis gun had been made and tested to dem- 
onstrate its utility for American ammunition. 
The machine-gun problem is complicated by two 
factors, first the question of manufacture, and, 
second, a difference in theory as to the use of 
machine guns. 

When this war broke out Great Britain was 
manufacturing the Vickers-Maxim, a heavy, wa- 
ter-cooled gun. She wanted a lighter type of 
gun and adopted as her lighter type the Lewis, 
manufacturing it on a very large scale in Eng- 
land. 

The French, however, have not used the Lewis, 
or any corresponding weapon, as a land operating 
gun in any large numbers, the French theory be- 
ing that it is better to have a very light gun shot 
from the hip or the shoulder, like the Chauchat, 
and a heavy type of gun shot from a tripod or 
carriage, like the Hotchkiss. So that something 
depended upon the troops with which we were to 
fight, the theory of combat which we were to 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

adopt, as affecting the type of machine gun we 
should select. 

There was in existence a board which had been 
appointed nearly a half year before — certainly 
some months before — to test all the machine guns 
there were, both those which were previously 
known through use and those which were not, in 
order that we might select the best types. The 
existence of that board did not delay for one sec- 
ond the selection or the procurement of addi- 
tional machine guns. There was a test made by 
the Navy, I think, in April, as a result of which 
it was shown that the Lewis gun had been per- 
fected to use American ammunition. There was 
an ordnance officer of the Army present at that 
test, and on the basis of that test immediate 
orders were given to the Savage Arms Co. to pro- 
cure Lewis guns. 

But we learned from Gen. Pershing in Europe 
that he does not desire Lewis guns for use 
on land. The regiments of marines which went 
from this country as a part of our military force 
were armed with Lewis guns. The guns have 
been retired from service, and those regiments 
have been rearmed with Chauchat rifles and 
Hotchkiss machine guns, just as are our other 
land forces. 

Under the studies made by the experts of Gen. 
Pershing's staff and by their direction and ad- 
vice to us, we are instructed to retain Lewis 
guns for use in aircraft, and are to press forward 

[^66] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

as rapidly as we can the manufacture of light and 
heavy Browning guns and Vickers-Maxim guns, 
for which a very large order was outstanding 
almost immediately after an appropriation by 
Congress a year ago to press those forward. So 
the situation in regard to machine guns at pres- 
ent is that the kind of weapons which Gen. Per- 
shing and his staff want is the kind which was 
developed as the result of that board's inquiry, 
and the particular weapon which is said to 
have made so great a success with the British, 
and doubtless has made a great success with them, 
is one which is determined by our experts to be 
appropriate for air service and not desired for 
land-operating troops. 

In the meantime, in order that the whole story 
may be told, it is in testimony before your com- 
mittee that the French Government is able to 
supply us with Chauchat rifles, or light guns, and 
Hotchkiss guns, or heavy guns, for the divisions 
and troops which we can this year send abroad. 

We ordered every Lewis gun we could get, we 
encouraged the manufacturers to enlarge their 
facilities. They still have not enlarged these as 
much as we have urged them to and contracted 
with them to that end. The supply of their 
guns is going through in larger numbers, how- 
ever, and in the meantime the making of the nec- 
essary machine tools and jigs and dies for the 
production of light and heavy Brownings, and 
expediting the production of Vickers-Maxims, is 

[267] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

going forward. Our army abroad is provided 
with guns of the type adapted to the mode of 
warfare which its experts have elected to use, 
and our supply which is to supplement those guns 
is of the same type and of the kind desired by 
them. 

Something has been said about our army in 
this country not having machine guns here to 
practice with. They have not had as many as 
we desired them to have ; and yet I have had from 
camp commanders many letters, saying that they 
have not been held back by the absence of these 
weapons, because the rifle ranges were not ready, 
and for one reason or another they were not 
ready to go forward with this practice. Still, I 
am sure if they had had machine guns at the 
camps in larger quantities they would have been 
able to have some machine-gun practice in most 
of the camps before this. 

I have had a table here, however, from the 
Acting Chief of Ordnance as to the machine guns 
which have actually been distributed in the camps 
in this country. 

"The distribution of machine guns to the na- 
tional draft camps has been as follows: Thirty 
Colt machine guns to each camp, 65 Lewis ma- 
chine guns, 45 Chauchat automatic rifles. Dis- 
tribution of machine guns to the National Army 
cantonments — 50 Colt guns each, 65 Lewis ma- 
chine guns, 45 Chauchat rifles to each camp. 

''In addition to those mentioned, 10 Lewis 
[268] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

guns have been issued to each regular cavalry 
regiment and lo Chauchat rifles to each regular 
infantry regiment. Practically all of the above 
before the troops were ready for them; that is, 
about November i." 

Now, frankly, that is not an adequate supply; 
but it means some machine guns with which the 
machine gun companies may practice, learning 
the mechanism and mechanics of these arms. A 
larger supply will be forthcoming as the result of 
this quantity manufacturing which has been ar- 
ranged for. 

One other item deals with cannon. There is 
a statement on that subject before this commit- 
tee, the statement made by Gen. Crozier. I men- 
tion it only because it contains some documents 
to which I want to refer. 

General Crozier called your attention to the 
fact that beginning in 1906 — and as I recall his 
statement about it, continuously from 1906 down 
— he has argued with committees — with the 
Fortifications Committee, the Military Affairs 
Committee — as to the length of time it takes to 
make heavy cannon. 

I have no criticism to make of the response of 
the Congress to his representations. Congress 
did what it seemed wise at the time to do, and I 
have not the least doubt that if I had been a mem- 
ber of this committee or any committee of Con- 
gress I would have been just as likely as they 

[269] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

were to take the view which they took of his 
recommendations. And yet continuously from 
1906, the expert of the Army on that question 
was saying to the Secretary of War and to the 
Congress — and the Secretaries of War have 
changed both in person and in political affiliation, 
if that amounts to anything, several times since 
those original recommendations were made — 
General Crozier was saying to you and to us that 
it takes a long time to make artillery, that artil- 
lery is getting to be a weapon of increasing im- 
portance and was urging that there be ample pro- 
vision for a more rapid completion of the pro- 
gram laid down in the Treat Board report. 

General Crozier said in 1912, for instance, or 
somebody asked him this question: 

"Does it take a long time to manufacture these 
field guns? 

"A. Yes. 

"Q. How long does it take? 

"A. I do not think we could count on getting 
a battery delivered in less than a year from the 
time the order was given. I do not mean to say 
that it would take a year for each battery, but 
deliveries would not begin until a year after the 
order was given. 

"Q. It is very important, then, to have them on 
hand? 

"A. Yes, it is the slowest manufactured of any 
of the fighting material we need." 

I shall not recall further the statements of the 
[270] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

general. They are supported by extracts from his 
testimony, his reports, and his letters to you and 
to me and to my predecessors, and they show that 
Gen. Crozier realized the slowness with which 
that sort of arm could be produced, and was con- 
stantly urging that ampler production be made of 
it. And yet, even Gen. Crozier could not have 
realized, and it did not lie in anybody's imagina- 
tion to realize, the importance which artillery has 
assumed in this war. The wars prior to this have 
been evolutions of large forces over great areas. 
This has finally reduced itself to a bitterly con- 
tested line, with the massing of heavy guns on 
both sides. Even the French did not realize the 
new development in this war until after it had 
begun. 

I have a letter before me from Mr. Tardieu, 
and perhaps I may be permitted to read it. It 
is written to Mr. Baruch and not to me. You 
will find here a few figures and further informa- 
tion concerning which I told you the other day. 
When war began France had at her disposal guns 
of artillery caliber about 89 millimeters, or 3.8 
inches, and of these only 140 were quick-firing 
— that is, really adapted to modern warfare. Only 
272 of these guns, with their personnel, were or- 
ganized in regiments with supply available on the 
battlefield. The balance were located in fort- 
resses and fixed emplacements. There was first 
a period during which the activity of the French 
war ministry in regard to heavy artillery was 

[271] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

limited to the equipment and formation into bat- 
teries of heavy fortress artillery. It was an error, 
as modern warfare requires quick-firing heavy 
artillery, but as everybody was convinced of the 
short duration of the war, it was wrongly thought 
that it was not necessary to start with the manu- 
facture of quick-firing, modern ordnance. 

It has been seen since that this policy was 
wrong, although one ought not to forget that the 
most important industrial regions of France were 
occupied by the enemy. The orders placed for 
heavy, quick-firing ordnance have been sched- 
uled. . . . 

I shall not read that schedule, but I will read 
the dates when France gave orders for heavy, 
quick-firing artillery. France, the very center of 
the conflict, with her enemy at her throat, with 
the demonstration that the massing of heavy ar- 
tillery was ultimately to determine the integrity 
of the Hindenburg line, gave orders for this type 
of artillery in September and December, 1914, 
and January, April, September, October, and De- 
cember, 19 1 5, and in January, 19 16, and the larg- 
est order she gave on any of those dates, except 
one, was the latest order given in January, 191 6, 
after the war had progressed substantially a year 
and a half. 

To return to our own situation : We had a lim- 
ited amount of artillery. The first step taken by 
the War Department was to attempt to speed up 
the artillery which we already had in process of 

[272] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

manufacture. Here again, however, we came in 
conflict or came into contact with two theories 
of the use of artillery. The French use very 
large quantities of the 75-millimeter type. Their 
barrage is made by enormous quantities of 75- 
millimeter fire. The British had a field howitzer 
of larger caliber for that effect. 

There are two distinct theories of the use of 
artillery on that front. The British prefer 
theirs, the French prefer theirs. We did not 
know then the relative merits of either. We had 
reports from our observers; we had experts' 
opinions, but now we had reached a place where 
we had to choose for ourselves — not to make a 
speculative and philosophical judgment as to the 
relative excellence of two military theories, but 
to select arms for an army that was going to 
fight for its life. 

As I shall show in a moment, our attempt to 
do that was by sending over to France the ablest 
men we had, to determine the choice on the 
ground in consultation with men who were mak- 
ing and using these different types of weapons. 
In the meantime we allowed no hindrance to be 
proposed in attempting to speed up the produc- 
tion of our practical types of weapons. 

But very early, perhaps in June, it was inti- 
mated to us that the French had so far accelerated 
their industry, in order to procure their initial 
supply, that the wastage of their use would not 
consume or occupy their industrial capacity, and 

[273] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

that therefore it would be possible for them to 
supply such troops as we could get to France, 
within limits, with artillery of their manufacture 
and of the kind they were using. That question 
was very actively taken up at once. 

Mr. Tardieu was here. He had for eight 
months, I think he said in his letter, been con- 
nected with munitions production in France; he 
knew the subject. General Crozier and he had 
many conferences about it, and on the 14th of 
July, or perhaps the 13th, an agreement was 
reached whereby the French Government under- 
took to supply us with quantities of the two prin- 
cipal pieces used, according to their theory of ar- 
tillery use, namely, the 75-millimeter field guns 
and the 155-millimeter rapid-fire howitzers. Mr. 
Tardieu wrote at that time an announcement 
to the French people of what had been done. It 
appears in translation in Gen. Crozier's testi- 
mony. 

Mr. Tardieu said: 

''The negotiations taken up for the first time 
at the end of May between Monsieur Andre Tar- 
dieu, the French High Commissioner, the Chief 
of War Munitions of the High Commission, and 
Gen. Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, were charac- 
terized by two ideas. On the one hand the Amer- 
ican Government wished to adopt the quickest 
solution in order to realize in the shortest time 
the complete armament of its forces ; and on the 
other hand with great foresight they attached 

[274] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

particular importance to realizing uniformity of 
munitions for the American and French Armies, 
called to fight on the same battlefields." 

I shall not read the statement in full, but the 
paragraph which I shall now read I think is 
significant : 

''The dominant note of the agreement lies in 
the proof it gives of the unshakable resolution of 
the American Government to achieve in the short- 
est time the maximum of military strength, and 
on the other hand it proves the active and inti- 
mate cooperation existing between the United 
States and France." 

I leave out the next statement. 

"The Secretary of War and Gen. Crozier, 
Chief of Ordnance of the American Government, 
have given proof in this case of the broadest 
spirit of comprehension and decision and have 
succeeded in a few weeks in securing for the 
American troops artillery of the first order." 

Now, at the time this statement was made, it 
was the confident expectation of everybody in 
this country that the sending of troops in large 
numbers to France was a thing in the somewhat 
remote future. That was in July. We were 
already sending troops, but the sending of armies 
rapidly had not then been as fully worked out as 
it has become since. 

There is in the testimony before this committee 
a telegram from Gen. Bliss. When the so-called 
House Mission went abroad, Gen, Bliss, Chief of 

[275] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

Staff, representing the Army, and Admiral Ben- 
son, representing the Navy, were members. The 
task of the Mission was to find out by conference 
with the French and British and ItaUans, and 
their military experts, an answer to this question : 
How can America contribute most to the early 
winning of this war? 

One of the answers to that question which they 
brought back, and telegraphed it before they 
came, was that the more rapid expedition of 
troops to Europe was an important factor, and 
they asked at once of their associates in confer- 
ence, "What about further supplies of artillery 
and artillery ammunition?" And there, in the 
high military councils of those two nations, the 
matter was discussed, and it was agreed that both 
Great Britain and France had surplus ordnance, 
surplus ordnance ammunition, and surplus ord- 
nance ammunition capacity; that Great Britain 
was in exactly the same state that France was. 
In order rapidly to equip her great army she had 
built up quantity production to such an extent 
that the wastage of war and the necessary aug- 
mentation of ordnance and ordnance ammunition 
would not exhaust her capacity, and therefore it 
was agreed by these international military ex- 
perts that "the representatives of Great Britain 
and France" — this is a telegram from Gen. Bliss 
in December — "state that their production of ar- 
tillery, field, medium and heavy, is now estab- 
lished on so large a scale that they are able to 

[276] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

equip completely all American divisions as they 
arrive in France during the year 191 8 with the 
best make of British and French guns and howit- 
zers. With a view, therefore, to expediting and 
facilitating the equipment of the American armies 
in France and, second, to securing the maximum 
ultimate development of the munitions supply 
with the minimum strain upon available tonnage, 
the representatives of Great Britain and France 
propose that the field, medium, and heavy artil- 
lery be supplied during 1918 and as long after as 
may be found convenient from British and French 
gun factories." 

I have seen, gentlemen, in the newspapers, 
statements that this taking of ammunition from 
France is putting her to a greater effort than she 
ought to undertake. I say to you that Gen. Joffre 
and his associates who' were here; Mr. Tar- 
dieu, the French High Commissioner ; the British 
representative. Gen. Bridges, and his associates, 
when they were here — I don't remember whether 
I spoke with Lord Northcliffe on this subject or 
not — but all of the persons who have come to this 
country with any knowledge on that subject ; and 
Gen. Bliss, who went to Europe to study that 
subject on the ground; all bring me the confident 
and positive assurance that we are not only not 
taking from France and Great Britain things 
which they need, but that we are helping them to 
maintain their processes ; that we are using facili- 
ties which they had organized in order to meet 

[277] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

a need; and that we are making a properly co- 
ordinated and cooperative effort of a military 
character with our allies in this war by this 
procedure. 

Yet we have not stopped there. Looking ahead, 
we have organized increased capacity in this 
country. The schedule of deliveries of artillery 
in this country which is before your commit- 
tee and which I will be very glad to leave with the 
committee for examination, I should not like to 
have appear as a part of this public statement, but 
the committee may have it. I will read figures 
which it will not be unwise to read. They show 
the production of mobile artillery ; they show our 
prospective procurements from France, and cover 
the year 1918. At the outset, in the month of 
January, out of the 75 mm. field pieces, we got 
620 from France, and there have been turned out 
of our own factories only 84. In April our own 
production rises to 231, and the French has 
dwindled to 73. In succeeding months our num- 
bers increase until in the month of December, 
1918, our own production of that piece is fore- 
casted to be 433 pieces. 

I have here on this table the figures for 3-inch 
and aircraft guns, 4.7 guns of American manu- 
facture, 155 mm. howitzers of United States 
manufacture, beginning with one in January, 
1918 — only nine months after the declaration of 
war. So far as this matter of the manufacture 
of the howitzers is concerned, involving so much 

[278] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

time, by the testimony of all experts, it is rising 
steadily and rapidly to a maximum of 300 per 
month in December, 191 8. This gun, also, shows 
original procurement from the French and di- 
minishing supplies from them with rising produc- 
tion on our own part. The 8-inch, 9.2 and 9.5 
howitzers of American manufacture and those 
procured in England are all shown on this chart. 

I think, gentlemen, that it is fair to say — and 
if there be a possibility that I am wrong about it 
I should like to have it called to my attention, so 
that I may make no statement here which is not 
wholly borne out by the facts — that the American 
army in France now and to be there, large as it 
now is and larger as it is soon to be, is being pro- 
vided with artillery of the types the men want for 
the uses to which they are to put them, as rapidly 
as they can use the artillery; and that our own 
stream of manufacture, to supplement our pur- 
chases abroad, is in process; and deliveries of 
some pieces are already begun, with, so far as 
industrial forecast can be relied upon, a rising 
and steadily increasing stream of American 
production. 

In addition to what I have said, gentlemen, I 
will read what is already before you, a statement 
made by Mr. Tardieu in a letter to General Cro- 
zier. This was a letter of December 21. 

"Even in such remarkable technical conditions 
as these, it takes time to realize such a pro- 
gram, to organize manufactures, and to have 

[279] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

men to direct them. You will take less time than 
We did in France, where the output of field guns 
was not adequate to our needs before the end of 
1916." 

Now, if I may supplement that with one or two 
other figures from this same report of Gen. 
Crozier : 

''The British Government in this country 
placed orders for ammunition and ordnance of all 
kinds totaling $1,308,000,000, extending from 
about the middle of August, 19 14, to the middle 
of July, 19 1 7, or over a period of about three 
years. In comparison with this our own Ord- 
nance Department has placed orders for 63,000,- 
000 shell" — I leave the odd figures out — "of a 
total value approximately of a billion dollars, be- 
tween the middle of May and the middle of De- 
cember, 1917, or over a period of seven months." 

In comparison with the total munitions and 
ordnance purchases of the British Government 
in this country in the period of about three years 
of $1,308,000,000, the Ordnance Department has 
placed contracts for a total of $1,500,000,000 in 
seven months. 

When this war broke out Great Britain was not 
prepared for it. She immediately began not 
only to organize her own industries, but to use 
every facility in a neutral country which she 
could lay her hands on to produce ordnance and 
ordnance ammunition. 

She had, as you know, Mr. Stettinius as a rep- 
[280] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

resentative here, an American representing her, 
and he has won deservedly a great reputation be- 
cause of the masterly way in which he rapidly 
evoked in this country agencies for the creation of 
ordnance and ordnance ammunition. 

When Great Britain was placing these orders 
she was placing all she could place. What she 
wanted was ordnance and ordnance ammunition 
in large quantities and in a hurry. So it is fair 
to assume that in addition to her own capacity 
for manufacture, she was getting from us at the 
same time at least the major part of what we were 
deemed capable of producing. 

I do not mean to say that that is a necessary 
conclusion, but everybody knows the urgency of 
Great Britain's need, and everybody who kept 
track of it at the time knows that the factories in 
this country which had made plows; and facto- 
ries, which had made cash registers ; and factories 
which had made adding machines ; and factories 
devoted to all sorts of standard industrial uses of 
one sort and another ; were gotten together under 
the spur of that impulse and devoted to the manu- 
facture of ordnance and ordnance ammunition. 

When we came into the field we came, it is 
true, into a field where some experience had been 
acquired by American manufacturers in the man- 
ufacture of ordnance and ordnance supplies, but 
at the same time we came into a field in part pre- 
empted and occupied by our allies ; and our prob- 
lem, so far as the Ordnance Department was con- 

[281] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

cerned, was not merely to commandeer right and 
left the facilities in this country for the manufac- 
ture of ordnance and let the British and the 
French take care of themselves. They were on 
the fighting line, and our necessity was to dove- 
tail our program into theirs in such a way as 
not to weaken their strength while we were build- 
ing up our own to come to their assistance ; so that 
our industrial problem, while obviously aided by 
the experience which our manufacturers have 
gained in the manufacture of ordnance and ord- 
nance supplies, was complicated by the fact that 
so very much of the very best talent in the coun- 
try was already devoted to their program and 
for uses which could not be diverted or suspended. 

I will now take up a comment which appeared 
in your address, Mr. Chairman, referring to the 
supply of clothing under the Quartermaster Gen- 
eral's department. It is perfectly true, and I 
thought I agreed with you about it when I was 
before you before, that the supply of clothing was 
inadequate. If I did not then agree to that fact 
it was only because it was so obvious that an ex- 
plicit statement of agreement did not arise out of 
the form in which the questions and answers 
were made. 

I said to you, I feel quite sure at that time, 
that our initial rush needs were substantially pro- 
vided for and that reserves would rapidly accu- 
mulate, and I supplied to the committee all I could 

[282] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

get — tabulated statements, with the exact num- 
ber of garments short in every camp. When you 
asked me about Camp Sherman and I telegraphed 
out there and got a message which was reassuring 
in character, and the next day got a correction 
which showed not so good a condition, I sent the 
second message to you before it was cold from 
the telegraph wire. 

I think you thought, Senator, that I was to 
blame for that. I wanted the Senator and the 
committee to have all the information I could get 
and I sent it without reservation, as I shall do in 
the future in response to any request that the 
committee makes. 

I have already said to you that at the outset we 
had the problem as to whether we should wait 
until we had an adequate supply of clothing, or 
whether we should not. 

In large part, I think the responsibility for that 
decision rests with me personally. The best in- 
formation I could get then, and the best informa- 
tion I have now is that it takes somewhere be- 
tween nine and twelve months to teach men who 
have not had previous experience, to live in 
camps, to learn the discipline and life of soldiers, 
so that they can be safely sent into the kind of 
warfare now waged. 

I did not then know, nor do I now know, nor 
can I know, how rapidly it may be necessary for 
us to send men to France. I know how rapidly 
we have sent them. I know how many are there. 

[283] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

I know what our present plan is in sending them ; 
but I do not know but that to-morrow — this has 
not happened — I do not know but that to-morrow 
it might turn out that it would be wise to double 
the rate at which we are sending troops. There 
are now in the United States i6 National Guard 
camps, 1 6 National Army camps, filled with men 
who are ready to go if it is necessary. I have 
sacrificed something for that. I have not will- 
ingly sacrificed the health of anybody. I have 
not intended to sacrifice the comfort of anybody; 
but I have intended, if it was humanly possible, 
to be ready when the call came; and if I w^ere to 
have delayed the calling out of these troops until 
the last button was on the last coat, and the call 
had come in November, or December or January, 
"Send them and send them fast," and they were 
still at home waiting for tailors, I would have felt 
a crushing load of guilt and responsibility which, 
at least in comparison with what 1 do feel about 
having called them out, would have been incom- 
parably greater. 

And yet I was not callous about it. I asked 
those agencies with which we were dealing in this 
matter how fast we could expect these supplies. 
They gave me the forecast as to the future. They 
relied upon their estimate of production and I re- 
lied upon it. Men who were called upon to take 
contracts for the production of cloth and the 
making of garments, not unnaturally perhaps, 
overestimated their capacity for production. Here 

[284] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

and there were some little labor difficulties — not 
many — the response of labor to this situation has 
been superb in the United States. Here and 
there were difficulties of transportation and de- 
lays in getting supplies from one place to another ; 
accumulating congestions upon the railroads, de- 
laying manufacture and shipment from one place 
to another; unprecedented weather conditions in 
the United States, a winter the like of which none 
of us has seen since we were children. 

The result was that in many of these camps 
there were shortages of coats, there were short- 
ages of overcoats, and perhaps in a minor degree 
of some other things, and at the very outset a 
shortage of blankets, which was quickly supplied 
by going into the civilian market and buying com- 
forters here and blankets there of a non-uniform 
type. 

The reports I have now are, and the reports 
for some time have been, that the quantity of 
woolen underwear in the camps is adequate, that 
the supply of heavy cotton khaki is adequate. For 
sonie weeks now we have had an adequate supply 
of overcoats. The supply of coats is approach- 
ing adequacy, almost without exception — I say 
"almost," because I have not had time to read 
all the reports — but from every camp which I 
have communicated with in the last few days the 
report comes to me that where there are any 
shortages of coats, and that seems to be the prin- 
cipal item, there is no such shortage as interferes 

[285] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

either with the safety or comfort of the men; that 
adequate stocks of heavy woolen underwear and 
overcoats have protected the men against actual 
suffering by reason of the temporary deficiency in 
coats, but even that temporary deficiency is, for 
the most part, supplied. 

Suppose I had taken the other counsel. There 
were two extreme alternatives : Either we could 
go into this war as nations used to go into wars, 
summon the countryside and assemble them into 
camps and work out their problems afterwards, 
which was one suggestion at the time ; or we could 
wait until the last element of preparation had 
been made before summoning the men. 

The unwisdom, I think, of either of those 
courses is obvious. What we tried to do — and 
the responsibility for it I think I must personally 
accept, because I was conscious of the grounds 
on which it lay — what we tried to do, was to sum- 
mon the men out as rapidly as they could be taken 
care of, with the best knowledge we could get of 
the capacity of the industry of this country. It 
is not unknown to any member of this commit- 
tee that when the draft army came to be assem- 
bled we delayed the calling out of its units 
sometimes a couple of weeks, sometimes more 
than that, in order that at each camp no men 
would be received who could not be taken care of. 
And the last element of the first 687,000 men 
selected by draft, the last element of those men 
intended originally to have come out in November 

[286] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

or December, will not in fact report to the camps 
until the 15th of February in order that produc- 
tion and distribution may catch up and be ade- 
quate for their entertainment and protection when 
they come. 

The fact is that all of the uniform cloth of the 
Army of the United States is made of virgin wool. 
There is no shoddy in any of it. There has been 
introduced into the cloth used for overcoats and 
for blankets an admixture of reworked wool, but 
in the uniform cloth there is no shoddy, there 
is no reworked wool ; it is all virgin wool. When 
we went into this war the standard of army 
quality for uniforms was that it should contain 
75 per cent wool and 25 per cent cotton. That 
had been our standard for a long time, but the 
specification was changed and the army uniform 
cloth, every yard of it, bought for this war, is 
virgin wool of the same weight it has always 
been, with a large increase in its strength in or- 
der to give it greater wearing qualities, while the 
use of reworked wool, or scraps, so-called shoddy, 
is limited to overcoats and blankets. 

On that subject I want to read, if I may, a 
statement made by the greatest wool expert in 
America on that subject. My attention was 
called to it only this morning. It is from the is- 
sue of Commerce and Finance of January 23, 
1918, and is written by Mr. William M. Wood, 
president of the American Woolen Company. 
Senator Weeks knows that I am not stating it too 

[287] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

strongly when I say that he is a man of very high 
authority in the wool world. Mr. Wood says 
this : 

"The recommendation of the Manufacturers' 
Committee to the Council of National Defense 
looking to the utilization of reworked wool is, in 
my opinion, worthy of consideration and not to be 
disparaged, as it has been in some quarters. Re- 
worked wool can be introduced into fabrics which 
are used for overcoats and blankets so as to im- 
^ prove rather than impair their usefulness. 

*'It gives a better fitting property to the cloth, 
makes a warmer, closer, tighter fabric, provided 
a judicious proportion is used." 

The Manufacturers' Committee, composed of 
patriotic and practical men, gave the Government 
its best judgment, based on the knowledge and 
experience acquired through years of effort in 
practical manufacturing, in recommending the 
judicious use of reworked wool. 

I am willing to venture the statement that in 
the construction of from 90 to 95 per cent of all 
the overcoatings made in the world, including 
some of the finest fabrics, there is used a meas- 
urable quantity of reworked wool, or shoddy ; so 
that the prejudice which appears to exist against 
the use of this kind of raw material is unfounded 
and unjust under modern conditions of manu- 
facture. 

As confirming this, I may mention that all the 
heavier military cloth in this country for export 

[288] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

to our Allies under specifications given by their 
respective governments, contains a large per- 
centage of reworked wool. 

In this statement I am correcting, too, a mis- 
taken belief which I shared with you. I had sup- 
posed that, on the recommendation of this com- 
mittee of the American Woolen Manufacturers' 
Committee, a uniform cloth which had originally 
been virgin wool was reduced to, first, 65 and 35, 
and then 50-50, proportions of virgin wool and 
reworked wool. 

Some question has been raised as to whether 
a heavier weight of cloth ought to have been sup- 
plied in view of the fact that foreign armies use 
a heavier weight of cloth. I can add nothing to 
the testimony in the record on that subject. That 
testimony, as I understand it, is this, that we have 
retained the cloth specified for our Army for a 
long time, so far as weight is concerned ; that by 
the injection of one hundred per cent of virgin 
wool we have strengthened it and increased its 
warmth and wearing capacity, but whether or not 
a heavier cloth ought to be used is yet to be de- 
termined. General Pershing was requested to 
have his experts in Europe investigate that point 
and report to us on or before the first of February 
whether he recommended any change in the uni- 
form cloth. That report has not yet been made 
by General Pershing and his staff, nor has any 
suggestion ever come from General Pershing or 
his staff voluntarily that there should be any 

[289] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

heavier cloth used in the making of our uniforms. 
I want to make but one further observation on 
this general subject of the quartermaster and 
supply department. I think it is not unfair for 
me to say that in the matter of provision of food 
no army ever assembled anywhere was fed as 
regularly, as well, as nutritiously, as appetizingly 
as this army. I think you gentlemen of the com- 
mittee, and surely the men in the War Depart- 
ment, will agree that while there have been com- 
plaints about other things, the testimony of this 
army so far as I know is unanimous that its food 
has been of the highest quality; that there has 
been no suggestion of defective quality or in- 
sufficiency in the quantity; that its preparation 
has been of the highest character, and generally, 
the very great problem of food supply for this 
vast and hastily organized group of men has been 
met with most extraordinary success. 

There is some question regarding the selection 
of cantonment sites, as to the healthfulness of the 
sites selected, and it has been suggested that the 
Surgeon General was not consulted with regard 
to the selection of sites. 

The War College Division of the General Staff 
made a study of the mode of training of the 
Army. The date of that is May 4, and the ques- 
tions they considered at that time were, first: 

''Shall the Army be assembled in regimental 
camps or brigade camps or division camps?" 

[290] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

They finally determined that it should be in di- 
vision camps. They then drew up a memoran- 
dum covering several pages, as to the mode of 
selecting and organizing these camps. The pa- 
per I have before me is the original, signed by 
Gen. Joseph E. Kuhn, then president of the Army 
War College. This report recommended, first, 
that the department commanders should be 
charged with the duty of making such selections 
for the troops to be raised or trained within their 
respective departments; and, second, that they 
should appoint boards of officers to investigate 
and report upon the available camp sites. 

Third, the number of such boards in each de- 
partment should be left to the discretion of the 
several department commanders. Each board 
should be composed of two experienced officers of 
the line, one of whom should, when practicable, 
be the division commander concerned, or his rep- 
resentative; one of the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment; one officer of the Medical Corps, and a dis- 
trict engineer. The requisite number of district 
engineers selected for their knowledge of local 
conditions should be placed under the orders of 
each department commander for detail on these 
boards. 

The fourth paragraph gives a catalogue of the 
considerations which should guide the department 
commander and the boards appointed by him in 
the selection of these sites. I will read only two 
or three pertinent ones. They should be of suffi- 

[291] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

cient size to accommodate a command without 
crowding and have an adequate water supply, 
both for the men and animals to be encamped 
thereon. They should be immune from floods 
and inundations. The surroundings should be 
healthful. There were other desirable features 
recommended, absence of insect pests as disease 
carriers, infrequent interruptions to training by 
inclement weather — in all a long and carefully 
prepared schedule. 

These guides were sent to each department 
commander. The principal places where these 
camps were to be selected were the Department 
of the Southeast, the Central Department, and 
the Southern Department. There had been just 
transferred, shortly before that, to the Depart- 
ment of the Southeast, the senior major general 
of the army, Gen. Wood, himself a medical officer 
originally, a man who had originated the train- 
ing-camp idea and put it into practice at Platts- 
burg until it was a demonstrated success, a man 
who, perhaps, more than any other man in the 
Army by common consent would have been recog- 
nized as the best equipped man to select camp 
sites and inaugurate a system of training camps. 

In the Central Department there was Gen. 
Barry, if I remember correctly, next in order — 
perhaps Gen. Franklin Bell was his senior — 
among the ranking major generals in the Army, a 
man with experience not only in this country but 
in our insular possessions, a lifelong soldier, a 

[292] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

man accustomed to the encampment of soldiers 
and the environment which ought to surround 
them. 

In the Southern Department, I forget who was 
in command. It w^as of less importance because 
it had the experience of the Border, and camp 
sites had practically been selected, so far as that 
department was concerned. 

These men were directed to select for recom- 
mendation the department camp sites. I am not 
referring to anything that is not perfectly known 
to everybody who lives in Washington, but from 
the day that it was known that camp sites would 
be selected, Washington was filled to overflowing 
with representative bodies of citizens desiring 
that consideration should be given to this site or 
to that site, pressing the advantages of particular 
locations on us as to their accessibility by railroad 
or otherwise, the character of their climate, the 
character of their soil. I think I am stating what 
is known to every one in this room when I say 
that the universal and unvarying answer was that 
those camp sites were regarded as of so grave 
significance, and their proper selection was of so 
much importance, that the Department was rely- 
ing on a board which could actually visit and 
compare on the ground the relative conditions, 
and I am stating what the record shows when I 
say that the camp sites actually selected were in 
every instance recommended by the department 
commander, his action being based on a board's 

1293] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

action, the board containing in every instance, so 
far as my knowledge goes, the senior medical 
officer of his department. Only in one instance 
was the question raised as to whether or not a 
camp site, tentatively selected, was in itself a 
healthful place. When that question was raised 
I asked the Surgeon General of the Army to select 
the most eminent and competent sanitarian in his 
department and send him to make a personal in- 
spection of the site. He came back and reported 
that the site was a sanitary and healthful one, and 
it was not until that report had been made that 
the site was finally decided upon. 

The records of the department in addition 
showed that upon the selection of these sites the 
Surgeon General's Office was notified of their 
selection. I am not raising any issue with the 
Surgeon General. I share the high opinion of 
his eminent talents and of his great past service 
and capacity for future service which this com- 
mittee entertains, and yet I want to have it per- 
fectly understood that in the selection of these 
sites his representative was a member of every 
board, and if any question ever arose with regard 
to the propriety of a site in process of selection 
that question was investigated under his direc- 
tion by my order until there was satisfaction as to 
the propriety of the selection. 

And now with regard to the building of can- 
tonments and the air space. The plans for the 
barracks and hospitals and buildings of these 

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WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

camps were referred to the Surgeon General 
and by him approved. I do not remember 
what the allotments of floor space they made were 
but they were approved, and the buildings were in 
the process of construction when there came a 
meeting, I think, of the American Medical Asso- 
ciation, and at that meeting a committee was ap- 
pointed to consider the sanitary conditions and 
character of barrack buildings for soldiers. That 
committee came to Washington and conferred 
with the Surgeon General, as was entirely help- 
ful and loyal and proper for it to do. It in- 
sisted upon a larger allowance, a larger square 
foot of floor space and cubical contents for each 
soldier. In deference to their advice, the Sur- 
geon General requested that a larger allowance 
be made. At the time that request was made, 
however, many barrack buildings had been con- 
structed, the whole system of plans had been 
made with his previous approval, and the work 
was going on. I therefore asked Gen, Gorgas 
to call on me with that committee, and I saw them 
in my office and discussed the question with them. 
I do not remember all of the persons who were 
present but I remember some of them. There 
was Gen. Gorgas, Dr. Mayo, Dr. Welch of the 
Johns Hopkins Hospital — I do not recall others, 
but there must have been perhaps half a dozen or 
eight of them, of great distinction in the medical 
profession, including Dr. Franklin Martin, of 

[295] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

Chicago, who was chairman of the medical sec- 
tion of the Council of National Defense. 

We raised the question of how much floor space 
the men ought to have, and they suggested that 
50 feet was the proper allowance. Then it was 
explained to them that the barracks were in 
process of construction, and they were asked 
whether they felt that the matter was so vital that 
it was wise to stop putting up the buildings we 
were then erecting and start over again on re- 
formed glans, and they said, No; they did not 
think so. They thought the thing for us to do 
was to take the minimum which they suggested 
as an ideal toward which we should build, and 
that we should ask Congress to permit us to spend 
more money putting additions to these barrack 
buildings, and ultimately get up to this allowance ; 
but they did not recommend that we stop building 
the barracks in order to make the enlargements 
which they suggested. 

That is more or less unimportant, except as it 
leads up to another subject. I said then, ''Gentle- 
men, we have now discussed cantonments, perma- 
nent barracks, more or less permanent wooden 
barracks. Now let us talk about the camps, be- 
cause a large part of these soldiers are going to 
be in canvas tents." 

Somebody said, and it was evidently accepted 
as the general opinion, that that subject need give 
us no trouble. They said, "Tents are automatic- 
ally ventilated ; there will be no trouble from them. 

[296] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

We wish — we believe it would have been wiser or 
safer — that the plans provided for having all the 
men in tents instead of having them in camps, 
because the tent is a smaller unit, which brings 
fewer men together in one place. It is automati- 
cally ventilated and we think you need not look 
forward to any of the problems arising from con- 
gestion in the tent camps." I recalled that to 
Gen. Gorgas's attention the other day and he re- 
membered it and said that that was still his 
opinion. 

Now the fact is that the more serious health 
difficulties have broken out in the camps that were 
in tents and the health conditions in the canton- 
ments, where the gravest concern was felt, have 
been better than those where it was felt that we 
had perfect assurance. 

I cite this not merely to show that expert opin- 
ion may not arrive at the correct solution of a 
difficult problem, but so that you may have the 
environment of that problem. Shortly after that 
conference it turned out that we would have to 
reorganize all of our divisions, making a larger 
company by the consolidation of other companies, 
and making a larger regiment. So it became 
possible in the various camps to make readjust- 
ments in the assignments to individual buildings 
and from the beginning, so far as the canton- 
ments are concerned, there has not been less than 
the minimum desired by this committee and Gen. 

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FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

Gorgas, of assignable floor space and cubical con- 
tents. 

For instance, the approved capacity of 500 cu- 
bic feet as a basis applied to the 16 cantonments 
produces these results: At Camp Devens, Ayer, 
Mass., on the basis of 500 cubic feet per man, 
there is room for 34,476 men. The greatest num- 
ber ever there was 34,800, about 300 too many. 
In every other one of the 16 camps the capacity 
of the 500 cubic feet basis is greater than the 
maximum number who have ever been there. At 
Camp Upton, 39, 1 1 1 capacity, maximum number 
29,000 (I read only the first figures) ; Camp 
Dix, capacity 39,800, maximum number, 20,- 
800; Camp Meade, capacity 38,500, maximum 
number 32,000; and so on, clear through the en- 
tire list, with the solitary exception of Camp De- 
vens, where the capacity on the basis of 500 cubic 
feet per man was exceeded, and that only by 
something over 300 men at one particular time. 

Regarding the number of men to be put in a 
tent the records of the War Department show 
that on the 15th of October the War College is- 
sued recommendations as to the manner of han- 
dling supplies in camps and cantonments, in which 
the following occurs : 

"Heavy tentage for the National Guard, unless 
otherwise ordered, and for State organizations 
which are to be mobilized at State mobilization 
camps, will be shipped direct to training camps to 
be there apportioned out according to the needs of 

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WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

all the organizations by division or camp com- 
manders on the basis of one large pyramidal tent 
to 12 men until the total supply of tentage avail- 
able is increased, when distribution will be made 
at the rate of one tent to 9 men." 

That recommendation, our records show, had 
the concurrence of the Surgeon General. That is 
from the War College minutes. Later, when the 
Surgeon General was making his inspection of 
the various camps, the number of men per tent 
was reduced from 9 to 5, as indicated in the ac- 
tion taken on December i, in the case of Camp 
Sevier. Similar action was taken on the recom- 
mendation of the Surgeon General at the other 
camps visited by him. 

What actually happened, gentlemen, was that 
we gathered in from the country young men who 
had not been brought before into contact with 
community living. They were young men from 
the sparsely settled parts of the country. They 
were attacked by measles, of which one of the 
ordinary consequences apparently in adults is 
pneumonia. Now I am not a physician ; I would 
simply be repeating what other people say to me 
if I undertook to detail any opinions on the sub- 
ject of pneumonia or measles, and I do not want 
to minimize the fact that in all human likelihood 
the prevalence of pneumonia in some places and 
of bronchial colds which lead to pneumonia, per- 
haps even the spread of measles, were caused by 
too many men being in a tent at one time, and 

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FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

facilitated by the shortage of clothes of the kind 
that I have previously described. And yet Gen. 
Gorgas told me, as I have no doubt he told your 
committee, that the worst epidemic of pneumonia 
he ever had to deal with was at the Panama Ca- 
nal, where there was not any question of shortage 
of clothes or change of climate. 

But I do extract from this record — this is, I 
think, evidenced by it — that our original expecta- 
tion was that the men in the tents would be safe; 
that practically the only thing we had to consider 
there was the convenience of the men in getting 
about in their tents ; and as soon as it was discov- 
ered that the boys by tying up tight the flaps 
of the tents and excluding the outside air were 
circumventing that outside ventilation, which had 
been counted upon so surely to protect them from 
the evil effects of congested conditions, just as 
soon as that was discovered by the Surgeon Gen- 
eral, instantly it was suggested that the rate of 
occupation of these tents should be much lower, 
additional tentage came in as rapidly as it could 
be sent in by express, and those conditions were 
improved. 

There was a shortage of blankets. The mills 
of the country could not produce them rapidly 
enough, and in some places — Camp Devens, for 
instance — a very large number of quilts was 
bought in the near-by stores and cities to supple- 
ment the supply of blankets until a full supply 
was possible; and it may well be if the boys had 

[300] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

had blankets enough to cover themselves com- 
pletely they would not have made the tents so 
nearly airtight. The point I want to make, if I 
may make it with propriety, is this : That the place 
where we least expected trouble, is the place where 
it came, not the place where I expected it nor 
where it was expected by the greatest and most 
competent medical experts of America, coming 
all the way from New York or wherever else their 
meeting was, to confer with the Surgeon General. 

The Surgeon General at the outset asked about 
hospital facilities at the National Guard camps, 
and it was then thought that since the men would 
be in those camps a shorter time than the men in 
the cantonments, and as the cantonments would 
be used by succeeding groups of men to be 
trained, there was not so much need for mak- 
ing permanent hospital facilities at the National 
Guard camps as at the cantonments. 

That view, however, was changed, the Sur- 
geon General's recommendation for hospitals at 
the National Guard camps was approved and the 
same kind and size of hospital, the same character 
of facility, was then directed to be put up at the 
National Guard camps, and is either erected or is 
being erected at all of them. Gen. Gorgas said 
to me that he himself approved the idea of erect- 
ing these National Guard hospitals without per- 
manent installation of flowing water, without 
permanent sewerage facilities, because at the out- 
set it was believed that they were to be more tem- 

[301] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

porary, but when it was discovered that they were 
to be more permanent, then he recommended that 
it be altered to a permanent installation of plumb- 
ing and water supply, and this change was then 
ordered. 

There were scattered through all of these camps 
the regimental hospitals which under normal cir- 
cumstances would be regarded as adequate to take 
care of minor illnesses of the men, places to which 
they could retire with a cold or a slight injury, or 
something of that kind. This provision of base 
hospitals was for the more severe cases. Of 
course the fact is that we were overtaken by epi- 
demic conditions before the base hospitals were 
ready in the National Guard camps, and it was 
necessary to evacuate some of those hospitals and 
take the patients to other places. When the Sur- 
geon General made his investigation and discov- 
ered that situation, just as soon as adverse health 
conditions arose at Camp Wheeler and in those 
other southern camps, his recommendation for 
the transfer of patients was instantly approved 
and carried into effect, and every recommenda- 
tion he made was complied with. 

It was at that time, after his return from this 
inspection, that Gen. Gorgas suggested to me in 
conversation the wisdom of having a detention 
hospital where new men coming to the camp could 
be placed for observation for the normal period 
of incubation of the common contagious diseases, 
so that there would not be in the future the chance 

[302] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

of newly drafted men or newly raised levies 
bringing- in from the outside contagious diseases 
and spreading them through an assembled force. 
I have been dealing with what has seemed to 
me to be the details of delay. I hope I have not 
seemed to deny their existence. I have tried to 
add to your information by showing you exactly 
what they are so far as I can learn them. I do not 
want to add any color of prophecy as to when 
they will be completely removed. I think you 
know, as a matter of fact, from the experts 
at the heads of these departments, just what the 
outlook is with regard to each particular thing, 
and so I turn aside to the plan of the war. 

I have understood that Senator Chamberlain 
felt that there was not a plan for this war. I do 
not know how far the members of the committee 
feel that ; I do not know how far the country feels 
that; but I want, if I can, to show to you that 
there is a plan ; that it is the only plan under the 
circumstances. 

It will be remembered that this war broke out 
in August, 1914. We went into it in April, 1917, 
so that for two and one-half years, or more than 
two and one-half years, the war had been going 
on. It was not as though war had broken out 
between the United States and some country, each 
of them prior to that time having been at peace 
with the other and with everybody else, so that 
an immediate plan could be made in the United 

[303] 



If'RONTIERS OF FUEEDOM 

States for conducting war against its adversary. 
We were coming into a war which had been 
going on for two and one-half years, in which the 
greatest mihtary experts, all the inventive genius, 
all the industrial capacity of those greatest 
countries in the world had for two and one-half 
years been endeavoring to solve the problem of 
what kind of war it was to be and where it was 
to be waged. 

It was not for us to decide where our 
theater of war should be. The theater of war 
was France. It was not for us to decide our line 
of communications. Our line of communications 
was across 3,000 miles of ocean, one end of it in- 
fested with submarines. It was not for us to 
decide whether we would have the maneuvering 
of large bodies of troops in the open. There lay 
the antagonists on opposite sides of no-man's land 
in the trenches at a death grapple with one an- 
other. Our antagonist was on the other side of 
that line, and our problem was and is to get over 
there and get him. 

It was not the problem of doing it our way and 
letting everybody else take care of himself. In 
the first place, we were going to fight in France, 
not on our own soil, and not on our adversary's 
soil, and therefore at the very beginning it was 
obvious that the thing we had to do was not to 
map out an ideal plan of campaign, not to have 
the War College, with its speculative studies of 
Napoleon and everybody else, map out the best 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

way theoretically to get at some other country, 
but it was the problem of studying the then exist- 
ing situation and bringing the financial, the in- 
dustrial, and the military strength of the United 
States into cooperation with that of Great Britain 
and France in the most immediate and effective 
way. 

That problem could not be decided here. I 
fancy in this audience there are men who have 
been in the trenches. The altogether unprece- 
dented character of this war is the thing 
which every returning visitor tells us can not be 
described in words, can not be put down in re- 
ports ; it is a thing so different from anything else 
that ever went on in the world, so vast in its deso- 
lation, so extraordinary in its uniqueness, that it 
must be seen and studied on the ground in order 
to be comprehended at all. 

It can readily be seen that we might have per- 
fected an army over here, carried it across the 
ocean and found it wholly unadapted to its task; 
it might well have been that the army that we 
sent over was just the one thing that our Allies 
did not need, and that some other thing which we 
might have supplied would have been the thing 
essential to their success. 

So that from the very beginning it was not a 
question of abstract speculation here, but a ques- 
tion of study there to find out where our shoulder 
could be put to the wheel. 

Our Allies realized that. And so Great Britain 
[305] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

sent over to us Mr, Balfour and Gen. Bridges and 
a staff of experts. They came over here and you 
saw Mr. Balfour in the Houses of Congress and 
at the White House and in public meetings at one 
place and another, but the group of experts whom 
they brought over with them you did not see much 
of; for they distributed themselves through 
the War Department, and their ordnance experts 
sat down with Gen. Crozier, their supply experts 
with Gen. Sharpe and his assistants, their strate- 
gists sat down with the Army War College, and 
all over this city there were these confidential 
groups exchanging information; telling how the 
thing was over there ; what we could do, what they 
advised us to do; what experience they had had 
in developing this, that, and the other implement 
or supply; how certain plans which one might 
naturally have evolved out of the past experience 
of the world had been tried and found not to 
work at all. 

They were exchanging information, giving us 
all that they thought was helpful. And then 
came Joffre, with his wonderful reputation and 
his great and charming personality, and he made 
a great figure here and we welcomed him. It 
was a tremendous inspiration to see the hero of 
the Marne; but with him came his unobserved 
staff of fifteen or twenty or twenty-five young 
men, the most brilliant men in the French Army 
— strategists, mechanical experts, experts in 
arms, experts in supplies, experts in industry and 

[306] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

manufacture, and they told us not merely the for- 
mal and military problems, but they brought over 
with them men who were in the war from, the be- 
ginning; in their reorganization of their indus- 
tries; in their mobilization of their industrial 
plants ; and we sat down with them in little groups 
until finally we collated and collected and ex- 
tracted all the information which they could give 
us from their respective countries. And every 
country which has been brought in the war has 
sent us that sort of a staff of experts, and it has 
been necessary to compare notes, and upon that 
basis to form such an idea as might be formed of 
what we should do over there. 

But that was not enough. They could describe 
to us and bring the specifications and drawings 
for a piece of artillery, but they could not tell us 
why the British theory of the use of artillery was 
preferred by the British to that of the French. 
They could not picture to us a barrage of heavy 
howitzers, as compared to a barrage of 75 mm. 
guns. They could not picture to us the associa- 
tion of aircraft, balloons and mobile aircraft 
with artillery uses. They could tell us about it, 
but even while they told us, the story grew old. 
The one thing they told us from the very begin- 
ning to the end was that this war, of all oth- 
ers, was not a static thing; that our adver- 
sary was a versatile and agile adversary; that 
every day he revamped and changed his weapons 
of attack and his methods of defense; that the 

[307] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

stories they were telling us were true when they 
left England and France, but an entirely different 
thing was probably taking place there now; and 
they told us of large supplies of weapons of one 
kind and another which they had developed in 
France and England and which, even before they 
got them manufactured in sufficient quantity to 
take them from the industrial plants to the front, 
were superseded by new ideas and had to be 
thrown into the scrap heap. 

They said to us, ''This is a moving picture ; it is 
something that nobody can paint, and give you an 
idea of. It is not a static thing." 

Therefore, it became necessary for us to have 
eyes there in constant and immediate communica- 
tion with us, and we sent over to France Gen. 
Pershing, and we sent with him not merely a di- 
vision of troops — to that I shall refer in a mo- 
ment — but we sent with him, perhaps I can say 
safely, the major part of the trained, expert per- 
sonnel of the Army. You know the size of the 
official corps of the Regular Army in this country 
when the war broke out. It was a pitiful hand- 
ful of trained men, and yet it was necessary to 
divide them up and send over to France officers 
of the highest quality so that they could be at 
the front and observe in the workshops and in the 
factories and in the war offices, and in the armies, 
where consultations would take place immedi- 
ately back of the front — so that they could see 
the thing with their own eyes, and send us back 

[308] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

by cable every day the details of the changing 
character of this war. 

Gen. Pershing's staff of experts and officers 
over there runs into the thousands, and they are 
busy every minute. Every day that the sun rises 
I get cablegrams from Gen. Pershing from ten to 
sixteen and twenty pages long, filled with measure- 
ments and formulas and changes of a millimeter 
in size, great long specifications of changes in de- 
tails of things which were agreed upon last week 
and changed this week, and need to be changed 
again next week, so that what we are doing at this 
end is attempting by using the eyes of the army 
there, to keep up to what they want us to do. 

Already you will find in your further examina- 
tion into some of the bureau work of the Depart- 
ment, and the work of some of the divisions, that 
schedules which were agreed upon, weapons 
which were selected, and which we had started to 
manufacture, have been so far discarded that 
people have forgotten the names of them, almost, 
and new things have been substituted in their 
place, and those forgotten and still others put in 
their places. 

So that if one gets the idea that this is the sort 
of war we used to have, or if he gets the idea that 
this is a static thing, it is an entirely erroneous 
idea. When you remember that we had to di- 
vide this little handful of officers that we had 
and send so large a part of them to France, and 
when you think of those who remained at home, 

[309] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

you will realize, I am sure, that those who re- 
mained here had and still have a double duty, for 
either aspect of which they are insufficient in 
numbers; they had to go forward with manu- 
factures, work out industry and industrial rela- 
tions; they had to see about supplies of raw ma- 
terials and manufacture finished products, and 
make from day to day alterations and changes 
that had to be made; and they had to be inge- 
nious with suggestions, to see whether they could 
devise on this side something which had not been 
thought of over there. They had to be hospitable 
to suggestions which came from the other side; 
they had to confer with the foreign officers who 
were here and were constantly being changed, so 
that men fresh from the front could be here to 
advise with us ; and in addition to that every one 
of them had to be a university professor, going 
out into the life of the community and selecting 
men who had mechanical experience and knowl- 
edge and training, though not on military lines, 
and adding to his original equipment the scien- 
tific training, that finishing touch which made 
him available for use as a military scientist. 

As a consequence, this little group which stayed 
here has built the great special departments of 
the Army. The Ordnance Department, starting, 
I think, with 93 or 96 officers, has now, as I recall 
the figures, something like 3,000 officers. They 
have had to be trained; they have had to be spe- 
cialized, and that has had to go on contempo- 

[310] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

raneously with this tremendous response to the 
changing conditions on the other side. 

In the meantime, when we started into this war 
I think it was commonly thought throughout the 
country that our contribution at the outset might 
well be financial and industrial. The industries 
of this country, the appropriate industries, and 
many converted industries, were largely devoted 
to the manufacture of war materials for our 
Allies. 

As I suggested this morning, when we went 
into that market we found it largely occupied, so 
that our problem was not going to a factory, let 
me say a shoe factory, and saying, "Make shoes 
for us," but it was going to a factory which never 
made shoes — because all the shoe factories were 
busy making shoes for people from whom we 
could not take them — and saying, "Learn how to 
make shoes in order that you may make them 
for us." 

Now, of course, that is not true of shoes, but it 
is true of machine guns, it is true of other arms, 
it is true of ammunition, it is true of forging ca- 
pacity, which was the greatest shortage. We 
could neither disturb the program of allied manu- 
facture in this country, nor cut off the supplies of 
raw material to our Allies, nor could we disturb 
the industry of this country to such an extent that 
agricultural and commercial and industrial 
products upon which they depended for the suc- 

[311] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

cess of their military operations would be inter- 
fered with. 

At the outset the idea was wide-spread that we 
would be primarily of financial and industrial as- 
sistance to our Allies during the year 1918. Let 
me read from the Metropolitan Magazine for 
August a suggestion which will show what the 
current expectation of the country was. Its edi- 
tor was protesting against what he believed to be 
the intention of the Government at that time. 

"Since it is our war, we want to put everything 
into it so as to finish it in the shortest possible 
time, so that the world may be restored. To our 
mind the whole plan of the War Department has 
been flavored with a desire to hold ofif until the 
Allies finish the war for us." 

You see, the editor was dealing with what he 
supposed to be the intention of the War Depart- 
ment at that time, that we were holding off, so 
far as actual military operations were concerned, 
and letting the Allies do the fighting. 

What he says we should have done, and I ask 
your particular attention to it, is this : 

"We should have strained every energy to have 
gotten from 50,000 to 100,000 men to France this 
year." 

That is, the year 191 7. I tell no secret, but it 
is perfectly well known to everybody in this 
group, that we have far exceeded what in August, 
19 1 7, was regarded as a program so ideal that 
the editor of this magazine refers to it as a thing 

[312] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

which we ought to have strained every nerve in 
a vain but hopeless effort to accomplish. 

And then the editor goes on: 

*'And by next year, 1918, we could have had 
500,000 men to send over, or any part of 500,000 
men which we could ship." 

Now, instead of having 50,000 or 100,000 men 
in France in 1917, we have many more men than 
that in France, and instead of having a half a 
million men whom we could ship to France if we 
could find any way to do it in 19 18, we will have 
more than one-half million men in France early 
in 1918, and if the transportation facilities are 
available to us, and the prospect is not unpromis- 
ing, we will have one and one-half million who in 
19 18 can be shipped to France. 

Why did we decide to send some troops to 
France in 191 7? It is no secret. When Marshal 
Joffre came to this country from France, when 
the British mission came, they told us of a situa- 
tion which we had not up to that time fully ap- 
preciated. Just before that time there had been 
conducted in France an unsuccessful major offen- 
sive. The French people had suffered, oh, suf- 
fered in a way that not only our language 
is not adapted to describe, but our imagination 
can not conceive. The war is in their country. 
This wolf has not only been a|: their door, but he 
has been gnawing for two years and a half at 
their vitals, and when this unsuccessful offensive 
in France had gone on there was a spirit not of 

[313] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

surrender, but of fate, about the French people. 
This mighty military engine which they had 
seen prepared to overcome them for forty years 
was at them, and their attitude was that no mat- 
ter whether or not every Frenchman died in his 
tracks, as they were willing to do, it was an 
irresistible thing, and so they said to us, "Frankly, 
it will cheer us ; it will cheer our people if you send 
over some of your troops." 

We did send some troops. 

At that time we had a choice. We could have 
sent over, as Great Britain did, our Regular 
Army, and with a very short preparation have put 
it into action and suffered exactly what Great 
Britain suffered with her contemptible little army, 
as it was called by her adversaries. Our army 
would have given as good an account of itself as 
the British Army did, but it would have been 
destroyed like the British Army, and there would 
have been no nucleus around which to build this 
new army that was to come over a little later. So 
it was deemed wiser to send over a regular divi- 
sion, but not to send over our whole Regular 
Army at that time. 

Then what happened was that that regular di- 
vision went over and the people of France kissed 
the hems of their garments as they marched up 
the streets of Paris. The old veterans, wounded in 
this war, legless or armless, stumping along on 
crutches, perhaps, went up the streets of 
Paris with their arms around the necks of Ameri- 

[314] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

can soldiers. Not a single man in that division 
was unaccompanied by a veteran. America had 
gone to France, and the French people rose with 
a sense of gratitude and hopefulness that had 
never been in them before. 

Of course they welcomed the British, but their 
need was not so great when the British went. Of 
course they welcomed the British, but there were 
ties between them and us which had not existed 
between them and the British, and so when our 
troops went, there was an instant and spontane- 
ous rise in the morale of the French, and an 
equally instant and spontaneous insistence that 
these soldiers from America should continue to 
come in an unbroken stream. 

And so we made the election. We decided not 
to send the Regular Army as a whole, but to send 
regular divisions and National Guard divisions, 
selected according to the state of their prepara- 
tion, and keep back here some part of our trained 
force in order that it might inoculate with its 
spirit and its discipline these raw levies which we 
are training. One after another these divisions 
have gone until in France there is a fighting 
army, an army trained in the essentials and in the 
beginnings of military discipline and practice, 
and trained, seasoned fighters in this kind of war 
are now on the actual battlefields. 

Early in this war, when Joffre and Balfour 
were here, they said to us, "It may take you some 
time to get over to us a great fighting army, but 

[315] 



FRONTIERS OP FREEDOM 

you are a great industrial country. Our man 
power is fully engaged in our industries and in 
our military enterprises, so send over artisans, 
special engineering regiments, and troops of a 
technical character." Although it was not con- 
templated at the outset, and only a phrase in the 
emergency military legislation shows that the 
thing was thought of as a possibility, yet in a very 
short time we had organized engineering regi- 
ments of railroad men and sent them over there 
and were rebuilding, behind the lines of the Brit- 
ish and French, railroads which were being car- 
ried forward with their advance, reconstructing 
their broken engines and cars and tracks. Those 
regiments were of such quality that at the Cam- 
brai assault, carried on by Gen. Byng, when 
the Germans made their counter attack, our engi- 
neer regiments threw down their picks and spades 
and carried rifles into the battle and distinguished 
themselves by gallant action in the battle itself. 
Very early in this war Great Britain and 
France, through Balfour and Joffre, said to us, 
"Send us nurses and doctors." Why, we were 
scarcely in the war before American units, or- 
ganized in advance and anticipation by the Red 
Cross, were taken over into the service of the 
United States through the Surgeon General's 
Office, and were on the battlefield. There are tens 
of thousands of men in England and in France 
now who bless the mission of mercy upon which 
the first Americans appeared on the West Front. 

[316] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

Our surgeons have set up hospitals immedi- 
ately behind the lines. They have been made 
military in every sense of the word. They have 
not been especially fortunate in escaping attack 
from the air, and our early losses in this war 
were losses of Red Cross nurses, doctors, order- 
lies, attendants in hospitals and ambulance 
drivers, who were sent over to assist our 
Allies in these necessary services, thus not only 
rendering assistance, but acquiring skill and 
knowledge of the circumstances and surround- 
ings, so that when our own troops came in large 
numbers they could render like services to them. 

But that was not enough. It was suggested 
that further groups of mechanics might be 
needed. Nay, we began to see that we were 
going to be over there in large force, and the 
question that then had to be answered was. How 
will we maintain an army in France? Special 
studies had to be made of that problem, and this is 
what they showed: 

They showed that the railroads and the facili- 
ties of France had during this war been kept in 
an excellent condition, far better than any one 
supposed possible under war conditions. But 
they also showed that those railroads were used 
to the maximum in taking care of the needs of 
the French and the British themselves, and that 
when our army became a great army it would be 
necessary for us to build back of our own line an 
independent line of communication. 

[317] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

In other words, France was a white sheet of 
paper so far as we were concerned, and on that 
we had not only to write an army, but we had to 
write the means of maintaining that army. 
From the first time when a careful and scientific 
study of the opportunities of France to help us 
was made, until this hour, we have been build- 
ing in France facilities, instruments, agencies 
just as many as we have here in the United 
States and more. For instance, the French had 
naturally reserved the best ports in France for 
their own supply. The Channel ports had been 
reserved for the British. When we came in it was 
necessary for us to have independent ports of 
entry in order that there might not be confusion 
and admixture of our supplies going through 
these ports of disembarkation with those of other 
nations. We were given several ports. As you 
perhaps recall, the ports of France are tidal ports, 
with tidal basins, ports with deep water at high 
tides but with insufficient water for landing at the 
docks when the tide is out. 

As a consequence, the construction of docks 
and wharves in the tidal basins of ports of that 
kind is very much more difficult than where you 
have a deep sea harbor and all you need to do is to 
erect a pile wharf. We have had to build docks ; 
we have had to fabricate in this country and send 
over dock-handling machinery; we have had to 
send from this country even the piles to build the 
docks. We have had to have gauntry cranes 

[318] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

manufactured in this country and sent over to be 
erected on those docks ; we have had to erect over 
there warehouses at the ports of disembarkation 
in order that these vast accumulations of stores 
and supplies which go over can be properly housed 
and cared for until they can be distributed into 
the interior. 

We have had to take over, and are in process 
of rebuilding and amplifying, a railroad 600 miles 
long in order to carry our products from our ports 
of disembarkation to our general bases of opera- 
tion. And all of that, gentlemen, has had to be 
done in this country and the things shipped over 
there — nails, cross ties, spikes, fish plates, engines, 
cars, buildings. We have had to build ordnance 
depots and repair shops and great magazines of 
supply in the interior. All of that problem has 
been carried forward step by step, the plans for 
a single ordnance repair shop, which I saw some 
time ago, covering acres and acres of ground. 
These buildings are designed over here, the iron- 
work fabricated over here, disassembled, put in 
ships, and carried abroad to be reassembled over 
there. 

We have had to build barracks over there for 
our soldiers, and in the meantime to billet them 
about in the French villages. Building barracks 
over there and building them here are very dif- 
ferent things, gentlemen. 

When we summoned the lumber industry of 
this country to produce the lumber to build our 

[319] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

cantonments here it came in a great and steady 
stream from all over the country. But when we 
talk about building barracks in France it means 
this : It means organizing — as we have organized 
— regiments of foresters; and sending them over 
into the forests of France which they have as- 
signed to us for our use ; cutting down the trees ; 
setting up sawmills ; making the lumber of vari- 
ous sizes ; transporting it to the places where it is 
to be used; and then finally putting it in place. 
In France we have had to go back to the planting 
of the corn in order that we might some time reap 
a harvest. Our operations began in the forests 
of France, not in the lumber yards as they did in 
this country. 

That great stafiF under Gen. Pershing's direc- 
tion, containing so many men from the American 
Army, is further enriched by our captains of in- 
dustry and masters of technical performance. 
The railroad and dock buildings, for example, are 
under a former vice president and perhaps still a 
vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Gen. 
William Wallace Atterbury. Such are the men 
who are carrying forward these operations, which 
are quite as extensive as any carried on over here, 
and of far greater difficulty, because they involve 
ordering material by cable as to sizes and speci- 
fications, having it fabricated here, and sent 
across through these infested 3,000 miles of 
ocean, and then set up over there. 

In addition to that, it has been necessary for 
[S20] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

us to build hospitals on the other side, for that is 
where the major need for hospitals may well be. 
It has been necessary for the Surgeon General's 
staff to meet a twofold demand ; to select supplies 
and procure materials, to send over staffs of 
trained persons to supervise the construction of 
these hospitals and to man them and equip them. 

All of that has gone on contemporaneously 
with the work which has been done in 
this country. 

In order that another element may be added to 
the kaleidoscopic character which this war neces- 
sarily has, let me recall to your attention a thing 
which you already know. This war had a more 
or less set character until the Russian situation 
changed, as it has changed, in the last few 
months. When we had gotten more or less used 
to the situation created by the uncertainty as to 
Russia, there came the great Italian defeat, which 
in many ways called for even greater changes 
in our plans. 

So that what might have been a perfectly ac- 
ceptable plan as to major operations prior to the 
change in the Russian situation, or prior to the 
change in the Italian situation, had to be restudied 
instantly. For that reason, among others, there 
is now organized, as you know, in France, pur- 
suant to the suggestion of Mr. Lloyd George, 
the Rapallo Conference, or Supreme War Coun- 
cil, and the United States is represented on 

[321] 



FRONTIERS DF FREEDOM 

that by the Chief of Staff of the American Army. 
The major international arrangements in re- 
gard to military questions are worked out there, 
while Gen. Pershing and his staff of experts are 
working out these other questions. 

That is a faint picture of what has been going 
on over there, gentlemen. On this side much also 
has had to be done. I ask you to remember 
among the achievements on this side, the building 
of this army, not of 50,000 or 100,000 or 500,000, 
but of substantially a million and one-half men. 

And now let me be frank with you, and let your 
judgment be frank with me about this. Has any 
army in history, ever, since the beginning of 
time, been so raised and cared for as this army 
has? Can the picture be duplicated? We have 
raised the Regular Army and the National Guard 
to war strength and supplemented them by the 
operation of a draft. There are Senators in this 
room who said to me with grief when we pro- 
posed that form of raising soldiers, "Mr. Secre- 
tary, it can't be done. It is too sudden to address 
to the American people that mode of selecting 
soldiers." And yet, has any great enterprise 
within the knowledge of any man in this room 
ever been carried out with more unfailing justice, 
with more intelligent explanation and commenda- 
tion to the good sense of patriotism of the Ameri- 
can people, and has any great and revolutionary 
change in our mode of practice ever been ac- 

[322] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

cepted so splendidly as the operation of the selec- 
tive service system? 

We have got these young men in camp, 
they are surrounded from the day they left home 
until the day they come back to it, if in God's 
providence they can come back, with more agen- 
cies for their protection and comfort and health 
and happiness, physical, spiritual, and mental, 
than ever before surrounded any army that ever 
went out on a field. 

They are classified by a system under which 
men who have mechanical instincts and training 
will be given mechanical opportunities in the 
army. The "round" man is not put into the 
"square" place. The Y. M. C. A., to which the 
American people have subscribed liberally; the 
Knights of Columbus, the Young Women's 
Christian Association, the Training Camp Activi- 
ties Committee, the Training Camp Athletic Com- 
mittee, the Red Cross, have all been brought in to 
live with the soldiers. By virtue of activities 
started in the War Department the communities 
which surround the camps have been won away 
from the notion which used to prevail of a 
certain alienation between a civilian and soldier 
group, and the soldier boys in these camps have 
been adopted into the homes and hearts of the 
people among whom they live. No such rela- 
tion has ever existed between an army and a 
civilian population as exists with regard to ours. 

[323] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

With your aid, by the establishment of zones, 
by the establishment of patrol systems of one kind 
and another, the Army has been able practically 
to stamp out intemperance and vice among the 
soldiers. By the training in the training camps 
of these young officers, men of experience and 
fine feeling, we have gotten into this great army 
the idea that it can be a strong and effective 
military body and still be free from things which 
have hitherto weakened and sapped the vitality 
and virility of armies. 

I have gone from camp to camp among these 
cantonments, and my first question to the camp 
commander almost invariably has been, "What 
about your disciplinary problem?" 

Old men in the Army, men whose lives have 
been spent in it from their boyhood, and who 
have been all over the continental United States 
and through its insular possessions wherever our 
armies have been, who know the life of the sol- 
dier and the camp and the post, all say with one 
accord and no exception, that they have never 
seen anything like this ; that the disciplinary prob- 
lems of the Army are reduced to a negligible 
quantity. As a result, instead of the melancholy 
and pathetic parade through the Secretary of 
War's office of court-martial after court-martial 
upon men who have yielded to temptation under 
these unfamiliar circumstances, which used to ob- 
tain, I have only an infrequent case now and then. 

When Lord Northcliffe returned to England 
[324] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

he was invited by Lloyd George, as I recall it, to 
accept a position in his cabinet. He wrote a let- 
ter which was printed in the papers, and in that 
he made this casual reference to the United 
States. He spoke of his visit here, and spoke of 
our war preparations in this fashion: 

"War preparations are proceeding in the virile 
atmosphere of the United States and Canada with 
a fervor and enthusiasm little understood on this 
side of the Atlantic." 

He was then in England. I happen to have a 
copy of a confidential instruction issued by the 
German Government in June, 191 7, to the Ger- 
man press as to what course they should take in 
dealing with American matters, and this says : 

"While the news about American war prepara- 
tion, such as the organizing and outfitting of an 
Army of 1,000,000 men strong to reinforce the 
French-English front, is looked upon in that form 
as bluff, the spreading of which may unfavor- 
ably affect the opinion of the German people, yet 
the fact must not be overlooked, on the other 
hand, that the United States with the support of 
its capacity for material and industrial manage- 
ment is arming itself for war with great energy 
and tenacity." 

Your investigations, gentlemen, have much still 
to cover ; but, when it is all told, Mr. Chairman, it 
will be a story which I am sure your committee 
will be glad to report to the Senate of the United 
States as being a tremendous response to a tre- 

[325] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

mendous responsibility. When you have com- 
pleted this investigation, I know that the Ameri- 
can people will feel, as I think they have a right 
to feel, that we are in this war to win it ; that we 
are in it to hit and to hit hard ; that we are in it to 
coordinate our strength with that of our asso- 
ciates; that the problem is not one of individual 
star playing but team play with these veterans 
under actual battle conditions ; that more has been 
done, perhaps, than the country expected, more 
than the wisest in the country thought it was 
possible to do. 

In so far as I am personally concerned, I know 
what is ahead of us. I know what the American 
feeling about this war is. Everybody is impa- 
tient for us to do as much as we can. There will be 
no division of counsel ; there will be all the criti- 
cism there ought to be upon shortcomings and 
failures ; there will be, so far as the War Depart- 
ment is concerned, a continuing effort at self- 
improvement and a hospitality toward every sug- 
gestion for improvement that can come from the 
outside. But the net result is going to be that a 
united and confident American people, believing 
in themselves and in their institutions, are going 
to demand, and that at no late day on European 
battle fields, in the face of veterans with whom 
they are proud to associate, a demonstration that, 
veterans though these men be, they can not excel 
us in achievement. And when the victory is won 
over there, the credit which will come to Amer- 

[326] 



WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO MAKE WAR 

ican enterprise and to American determination 
and to American courage will be an honor to us, 
as the tenacity of purpose and splendid achieve- 
ments of the British and French have already 
shed luster on the names of those great nations. 



[327] 



WITH THE AMERICAN EXPEDITION- 
ARY FORCES IN FRANCE 

To THE Engineers, 
March 14, 1918. 

THESE days have been worth my trip across 
the Atlantic in the information and encour- 
agement which they have given me. I have seen 
only the effort in two ports, only the receiving 
depots of the great war plant which we are con- 
structing. But I have seen enough to convince 
me that we now have an organization which will 
meet the problem with its increasing volume of 
demand, of coupling up the ports of embarkation 
at home with the ports of debarkation in France. 

I find that the written reports have given me 
an inadequate idea of the difficulties which the 
enemy said we could not overcome, and which 
we are overcoming. After her long and stout- 
hearted defense, France could spare us little 
material or labor for our purposes, except by 
ill-advised diversions from her own organization. 
She could only offer us land on which to raise 
our structures and the right of way for our com- 
munications. 

I should like to pay a tribute to you men who 
[S28] 



EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE 

began last summer and fall to bring into being 
the blueprints of a great conception, which is 
now advanced enough to yield conviction of suc- 
cess to any observer; and a tribute to our engi- 
neers and experts from civil life in all branches 
who serve with the officers of the regular engi- 
neers in command of an increasing army of 
workers, all doing their part. 

You come from a pioneering people and you 
have brought to France a pioneering energy. 
You have turned marshes into docks, facing 
waterways which you will dredge; sent out a 
spur of railway track; and built warehouses and 
the necessary supplementary plants for a system 
which will dispatch along the lines of communi- 
cation to the front food, clothes, guns, ammuni- 
tion, and all the enormous amount of complicated 
war material which the resources of our country 
can supply, to be transported by ships which we 
are building. 

We owe it to your devotion and efficiency that 
the troops in action shall not lack the means of 
striking blows. I only wish that every American 
could see this work as I saw it. I ceased to be 
an official while I thrilled as a citizen with pride 
and satisfaction over the ever-increasing force 
which we shall bring to the aid of the Allied 
armies in France. 



[329] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

[To THE Officers of the General Staff, 

March i8, 19 i8. 

It was with a view to following the route of 
our troops and material along the lines of com- 
munication to the front that I began my tour 
with the ports of debarkation. To-day I have 
been through the busy offices of the General Staff 
and the administrative departments at head- 
quarters. I have met the men who from this 
nerve center direct the organization which they 
have created. 

I appreciate how you would prefer to leave 
your desks for the front line, where you could 
see the direct result of your efforts against the 
enemy. But you at least are in France, and 
thereby are the envy of those who are held at 
their desks in the same kind of work at home. 
Many of you are former students at Fort 
Leavenworth and the War College. Action has 
taken the place of study. The problems which 
you have to solve are no longer those of theory 
in the movement of imaginary forces, but of fact, 
in control of the supply and equipment of large 
bodies of troops in the greatest military under- 
taking of our history. 

The black band around the sleeve which is the 
emblem of the General Staff has become the sym- 
bol of great responsibility to the people at home 
and to the man in the trenches, responsibility for 
accomplishing the maximum of efficiency in di- 

[330] 



EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE 

reeling the resources at your command with the 
minimum cost of Hf e, energy and material. Your 
ambition to excel in your profession and your 
studious application in the time of peace, when 
we had a small army, have earned the gratitude 
of your country at a time when the most valuable 
asset we have is the well-trained soldier in the 
prime of his manhood who has kept his mind and 
body fit for this emergency. 

General Pershing has had the vision, the 
authority, the high organizing ability and the 
broad conception to make the most of your talent 
and industry in the results which have been so 
reassuring to me as Secretary of War. Your 
modesty, your willingness to learn from the tra- 
ditions and technical experience of the Allied 
armies, is in keeping with your soldierly realiza- 
tion that war is skill against skill, force against 
force, and that you are forming an army to fight 
against a most powerful, skillful foe, who allows 
nothing to divert him from the main essential. 

Your plans have been commensurate with your 
tasks, your spirit has been in keeping with the 
inheritance which you have from Grant, Jackson, 
Lee and Sherman. While you have been building 
your structure you have had to act as instructors 
for our untrained forces, and signs are not want- 
ing of your success in adapting our national char- 
acter and zeal to the end of victory. 

I have been at one of your artillery schools, 
where young reserve officers are preparing to 

[331] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

support our troops with their gunfire. I have 
seen your staff school, where another group of 
reserve officers, including a former Secretary of 
War, whom I envy, is being trained to assist in 
your stafif work when we shall number our corps 
in France as we now number our divisions. 

Some of the pioneers in forming our organiza- 
tions in France are now out with the troops, and 
officers with the troops are being brought in for 
staff work as a part of your system of all-around 
preparation. I might say that promotion awaits 
those who have proven themselves fit to lead in 
the stern test to come. However, I know you 
are not thinking of promotion, but only, in a spirit 
of soldierly service, how to give the best that is 
in you to the cause. 

To THE Rainbow Division, 
March 20, 191 8. 

While it was in training at home I saw a good 
deal of the Rainbow Division. Then, one day, 
it was gone to France, where it disappeared 
behind that curtain of military secrecy which 
must be drawn unless we choose to sacrifice the 
lives of our men for the sake of publicity. The 
enemy's elaborate intelligence system seeks at 
any cost to learn the strength, the preparedness, 
and the character of our troops. If we were to 
announce the identity of each unit that comes to 
France, then we would fully inform him of the 

[332] 



EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE 

number and the nature of our forces. Published 
details about any division are most useful to 
expert military intelligence officers in determin- 
ing the state of the division's training and the 
probable assignment of the division to any 
section. Our own intelligence service assures 
us that the complete knowledge of our army in 
France which some assume to exist does not 
exist. At least, we make our adversary work for 
his information and spare no pains to keep him 
as confused as possible. 

But now it is safe to mention certain divisions 
which were first to arrive in France and have 
already been in the line. This includes the 
Rainbow Division, famous because it is repre- 
sentative of all parts of the United States. As 
a military unit, however, it is to be judged only 
by its efficiency against the enemy, regardless of 
its origin. At the same time, this division 
should find in its nation-wide character an inspir- 
ation to esprit de corps and to general excellence. 
It should be conscious of its mission as a symbol 
of national unity. 

The men of Ohio I know as Ohioans, and I 
am proud that they have been worthy of Ohio. 
A citizen of another State represented in this 
division will find himself equally at home in some 
other group of this division, and the gauge of 
this State's pride will be the discipline of that 
group as soldiers, its conduct as men, its courage 
and skill in the trenches. 

[333] 



FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM 

You may learn more than war in France; you 
may learn lessons in patriotism from France, 
whose unity and courage have been a bulwark 
against that sinister force whose character you 
are learning in the trenches. The Frenchman is, 
first of all, a Frenchman, which stimulates rather 
than weakens his pride in Brittany if he is a 
Breton, or in Lorraine if he is a Lorrainer; and 
his loyalty and affection for his own town or vil- 
lage, and his home. In very truth, he fights for 
his family and his home when he fights for 
France and civilization against the principle of 
the ruthless conquest of peoples by other races 
and culture. 

You, too, will fight best and serve best by being 
first of all Americans, with no diminution of 
your loyalty to your State and your community. 
Though you have come three or four or five 
thousand miles to the battleground of France, 
you are each fighting for your home, for your 
family, for all that you value as men, and for 
future generations in this conflict, whose influ- 
ence no part of the world can resist and whose 
result is the concern of every human being in 
the world. With us at home the development of 
a new national unity seems a vague process com- 
pared to the concrete process you are undergoing. 
You are uniting East, West, North, and South 
in action. We aim to support you with all our 
resources to make sure that you do not fight in 
vain. 

[334] 



W 93 



EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE 

I thought you marched well and drilled well 
when I last saw you, but what I have seen of you 
to-day gives me a new standard of comparison. 
The mark of the thorough system of our army in 
France is upon you. I feel you have all grown 
to greater manhood, and that the steel of your 
spirit now has the fighting edge. To your rela- 
tives scattered over the States I send the message 
that you are well led, and that you want for none 
of the supplies and for no attention which safe- 
guards your health. Your own communities 
and the nation as a whole may be proud of your 
good conduct and clean living, which go with 
clean, hard fighting, and with the principles for 
which you fight 



[335] 



»-• 







"^^0^ 










